Ashes to Ashes
by A Song of Purity
Summary: Molly Hale always thought the Unown were the worst that could happen...until Celebi whisked her away without warning one day. When she returns from a bleak future to her own time, five years after her supposed death, her sole mission is to stop the Master from destroying the world. The catch: she needs to make sure he saves it, first. Too bad Ash is always oblivious, eh?
1. Prologue: What Doesn't Kill You

**So this is a fanfic that's been in my computer forever because I've had this idea for...a long time. I've just been too lazy to either really work on it or post it up to ffnet. This is a Molly-centric story with a little bit of Ash x Molly (Deliachildrenshipping) which I know isn't a popular ship, but it works well with my story. That'll come much, much later though. _Warning_: this will have character death and some pretty heavy violence and dark themes. Epic, but dark themes. This isn't the everybody-is-so-happy-and-nice universe that the anime is. That's for 10 year olds and it's obnoxious. **

**Creative license: Molly was 6 at the time of Spell of the Unown (third movie) rather than 4 or whatever ridiculously young age they said she was. That puts her 4 years behind Ash.**

**Chapter titles are part of a iPod shuffle challenge. Each chapter title will be either the title of or lyrics from the next song in my shuffle lineup. Well...enjoy!**

* * *

_**Ashes to Ashes**_

_Prologue: What Doesn't Kill You_

_Kelly Clarkson, What Doesn't Kill You_

"Name, please."

"Molly Hale."

"H…H-A…Ah, here you go. If you could just fill out these forms and return them to the registrar with your invitation by noon today, that'd be great. Good luck!"

The tall, blue-eyed brunette thanked the receptionist at the Pokemon Center and walked to an empty table outside. Her tanned skin and lean body caught the attention of several passersby. A small Teddiursa followed her, never straying too far from her well-muscled legs.

"Ursa," it cried and clung to her leg as soon as she sat down. She smiled at it, remembering how it had refused to evolve because it liked being fawned over and adorable.

And because both it and its Trainer had realized the advantages of having a Pokemon that opponents usually sorely underestimated.

"Not right now, Dee," the brunette told it gently, but without the cheerfulness that would have been in her voice five years ago. The small bear pouted and sat down on the ground, still hugging her leg. She sighed.

_Name: Molly Hale_ was already printed at the top of the page, she noticed as she turned back to the paperwork in front of her. Her long earrings – made from rose diamonds – clinked as she lowered her sunglasses from her forehead to block out the glare of the morning sun.

_Age: _

She scribbled in a _20_ in her script-like handwriting, which never seemed to lose its elegance no matter how fast or carelessly she wrote.

_Date of birth: 5__th__ of Summer_

_Hometown: Greenfield_

_Number of badges: 32_

She hesitated as she wrote the number 32 down. She _had_ technically earned all of her badges in Pokemon battles, fair and square, but…

She brushed away the thought and continued writing.

_PokeGear number: _

She took out the small device from the bag she always carried with her. It was highly customized, the reds and pinks sparkling, the glittery surface catching the sunlight rather than reflecting it blindingly. A large Entei sticker covered the whole back cover, and her screen background was an Entei standing on a peaceful beach.

_Entei…_For a second, Molly had to fight the urge to run home to Greenfield and lock herself in her room and pretend nothing was wrong. _Home,_ she mused. _Do I even have a home here?_

She shook her head, checked her number, and copied _50894-1028_ onto the paper.

Seeing the electronic device brought a strong wave of nostalgia. Five years ago, she would have smiled at the memories that flooded her mind – her twelfth birthday, receiving the PokeGear, and somehow obtaining Ash Ketchum's number – but now only the left corner of her lips quirked a little, and she regretted that she had lost that innocent happiness.

It had been five years since anyone had called her. Or had been able to call her, anyways. Did her friends think her dead? _They probably did. And still do,_ she thought bitterly. Then she caught herself, and her anger calmed. It hadn't been their fault. They'd looked for her, even, but probably hadn't been able to find her body among the countless others from the plane explosion victims. They would have given her up.

But she'd been in a place where no one could have followed after her, anyways. And it _had_ been five years. No matter how big of a stir she had caused, her story had probably fizzled out when the search parties continued to return disappointed and empty-handed. The receptionist hadn't even recognized her name.

Anyways, she _was_ dead; dead to the world around her, dead to the people she loved, dead to world she'd spent the last five years in, dead…

The old Molly Hale was dead. In her place was a Molly Hale that had seen too much death and held too much power, so that the new Molly Hale was cold and hardened and bitter and afraid and _mature_.

She forgot about the paperwork for a minute as she flipped the PokeGear open again, looking at the screen with apprehension. She should have called her father as soon as she had been able to, she knew, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. The contact _Daddy_ flashed in her list several spaces below _Ash Ketchum_. There were several hearts beside Ash's name, and she suddenly felt rather empty as she scrolled through the rest of her contacts.

She'd been back for a week now and this was the first time she'd even touched her contacts list. What would she say to them? She had been presumed dead for five years.

"_Hello? Who is this?" _

"_Oh, hey Ash, it's me, Molly. You know, the girl who died in that plane wreck five years ago. Except I didn't actually die, I'm still alive. Celebi just decided to take me into the future, where you're an evil mastermind intent on destroying the world. Oh, and I got sent back to kill you after you save the world. Surprise! So how are ya?" _

No, that conversation would not go very well.

_Ash Ketchum,_ she thought dryly. _The love of my pre-teen years. The one who has the power to save the world…and to destroy it. _

Of course, he wouldn't know that. But she did.

She snapped her PokeGear shut with a vengeance and returned to her paperwork, stubbornly refusing to let her mind be occupied with more thoughts of what could have been, and what would never be.

_And we thought the Unown were bad,_ she remembered sardonically as she finished filling in the information, including the eight Pokemon she would enter in this tournament. _Compared to the prophecy of the apocalypse…well, I'd take the Unown any day over that. It's too bad I don't know exactly what the prophecy is. It's too bad _no one_ knew what the prophecy is. _

Eight Pokemon, she wondered idly. When had that number changed from the standard six she was so used to? She had six with her—which others could she battle with after having spent the last five years with her six? Phanpy, maybe, and Seadra. Did they still _remember_ how to battle? She left the form with only six Pokemon filled out, noting that she would update the information on their online system later.

And then she wondered whether her Pokemon were still being held by Professor Oak. After all, it _had_ been five years, and Pokemon were usually released back to the wild when their trainers died, as if their Pokeballs had shattered.

But she was still alive, wasn't she? Her Pokemon wouldn't have turned feral, and if she could just access the Pokemon transfer system in the Pokemon Center after she registered, she could probably transport two more Pokemon into her possession without Oak noticing. _If only I could remember what Pokemon I have,_ Molly thought dryly. _They probably don't even remember how to battle. It's been five years. They've probably grown fat and lazy. _

Her mind brought back images of the Unown. She remembered the dream, _her _dream, that had shattered her perfect world, the dream that had broken the confines of the psychic power that the Unown were channeling. In that dream, she had been able to control her own aging process, and she remembered with a heavy heart how she had changed herself to be twenty years old at first when she battled Brock, then regressed back to fifteen years old when she battled Misty.

She had been remarkably unsurprised as she aged and her body matured to look exactly like the beautiful woman Brock had battled in her dreamscape. But she knew she could never be the carefree girl with big dreams again.

"Come on, Dee," she said to her small Pokemon as she scooped it up in her arms. It wrapped its short paws around her neck in a…well, a _bear_ hug – quite literally. She almost smiled at that as she walked back in through the double doors of the Pokemon Center and found the registrar's desk behind a long line of trainers.

"Dee," her Teddiursa insisted, and she sighed, opening her backpack as she balanced it on one knee.

"Here you go, you little monster," she told it affectionately, handing it an open container of sticky honey. It made an odd chirping sound then fell silent as it stuck its paw in the honey and began licking.

"That's a cute Teddiursa you have there," came a voice from behind her, and she mentally cursed. _What are the chances?_ her mind screamed, panicked. _Next to zero! Run! _Her body had already turned itself halfway to her right and was ready to throw itself into a sideways roll.

_Maybe he won't recognize me,_ she told her mind sternly as she forced herself to turn slowly to face the brown-skinned, dark-haired man behind her. She fought to control the urge to skitter away and run as far as possible from this man, clenching her hands. Her fingernails cut her palm.

"Thanks," she said, smiling politely. "His name is Dee."

"Teddiursa!" it wailed, although the sound was somewhat muffled by the honey sticking to the roof of its mouth. Molly was the only one who could understand what it was saying, and she silently agreed. Her first instinct upon hearing the man's voice had been to turn around and stab him. An image of the man's body, broken and bleeding upon a sandy beach, flashed into her mind. She pushed it out, refusing to remember.

_I'm in a different time, a different place now,_ she reminded herself.

"My name's Brock," the man said, and he held out his hand. She took it automatically and shook it firmly, and in the next second, the instincts she had developed screamed at her to let go so loudly that she felt lightheaded. The last time he had taken her hand, he had shattered her forearm and twisted her fingers broken. "What's yours?"

"Mo…Miranda," she stammered, almost giving him her real name. _Idiot,_ she berated herself. "Nice to meet you." She waited for him to start flirting badly, as he was reputed to do often. According to Misty and Ash, anyways.

It never came. He was staring at her, but not in the _I-want-to-ask-you-out-but-I-don't-want-to-seem-des perate_ way, as she was accustomed to from most of the men who'd approached her this past week. On the outside, she pretended not to care about the scrutiny, but on the inside, she was squirming.

_Calm down, _she told herself as the line moved forward. _This is the old Brock. The real Brock. Uncorrupted by the Master, not-trying-to-kill-me-Brock. _

Unfortunately, his presence here meant that the rest of the trio – Ash and Misty – were somewhere nearby. _They all competed in this tournament,_ she recalled. _That's why Misty sent me back here. So they all would have had to register sometime between now and noon…well, don't I just have the greatest timing. _

"Brock!" came a shout. "Brock, leave that poor woman alone!"

Brock didn't answer, but continued to stare at Molly. After a short pause, he said, "You sure do look familiar. Have we met before?"

"I don't think so," she replied, trying to keep her voice from shaking from the barrage of conflicting emotions she felt. _Misty,_ her heart crowed. _Misty's here. Misty's alive._

But then she remembered that she and the redhead would not be friends yet. They wouldn't have gone through five brutal years of survival yet, wouldn't have gone through five years of just barely escaping the clutches of the Master.

And Misty wouldn't have died trying to send her back yet.

The redhead in question appeared behind Brock, tugging at his ear. "Ow, ow," he shouted as she dragged him forcibly backwards and smiled apologetically at Molly. "Sorry about him," Misty said brightly as Brock nursed his ear. "I'm—"

"Brock," came a third voice, and instinctively, Molly jumped away from them, almost crashing into the people in front of her. Her Teddiursa unsheathed its sharp claws and growled softly at the newcomer, its cute and relatively harmless manner transforming into something that was carnal, dangerous. "Brock, why didn't you wake me up on time? Now we have to wait in line."

"Oh, quit whining, Ash," Misty snapped as the spiky-haired trainer walked up to join them. "It's your own fault you sleep through all your alarms."

"Miranda, are you alright?" Brock asked, looking at her in concern. She realized that she was still frozen in her tense half-crouch, and Teddiursa was still ready to pounce with its claws out. She forced herself to relax. _This is just Ash Ketchum,_ she told herself. _He's not the Master…yet. _

"I-I'm sorry," Molly choked out, still trying not to hyperventilate. "I…I thought you were someone else." Which was at least partly true, she thought. She felt her Teddiursa retract its claws.

Ash smiled at her disarmingly, and she resisted the urge to shudder as she saw the face of an entirely different person in its place, leering at her and the Resistance movement. _Not entirely different,_ her mind supplied. _Entirely the same. Like two different sides of a coin. _

A coin after it had tarnished, been covered in tar, and then burned might be a better analogy, she thought as Brock continued to scrutinize her. "It's all right," Ash told her kindly. "I hope Brock didn't annoy you too badly."

"Brock, that means _stop staring at her,_" Misty said pointedly. Dee remained tense, but reluctantly kept its claws sheathed.

"She just looks so…familiar," Brock finally said as they stepped forward. The line was still long. "Doesn't she remind you of someone?"

_Great,_ she thought as Ash and Misty joined Brock in analyzing her face. _Just what I need. Two of my enemies – or rather, two of my future enemies – and my future best friend staring at me after I've been missing for the past five years. _

"She does remind me of someone," Ash began uncertainly, "but…nah, that's not possible." He laughed nervously.

"She's pretty, I'll give her that," Misty joked. Molly almost smiled. "But I don't think we've met her before. Maybe she's someone you knew from working with Professor Ivy?"

Molly breathed a sigh of relief, stepping forward as the line moved again. _That's right,_ she remembered. _Brock was the only one who actually battled me when my dream self was this old. Ash and Misty left to find Ash's mother after a couple minutes, and Misty battled me in a younger form. _

Brock would remember her more clearly than Ash and Misty would; Ash and Misty wouldn't recognize her at all, she hoped as they stepped forward.

"She reminds me of red hibiscus flowers and the ocean," Misty suddenly declared, frowning, "but I really can't think of why that is. And meadows. She reminds me of meadows."

_Their memory is better than I thought it would be, _Molly realized, and she cursed.

"Beaches and meadows," Ash mused quietly, and he stared at her hard. Molly prayed that they wouldn't remember any more than that. "How are those two linked? There's a connection in there," he muttered, mostly to himself, "but I can't…all I can think of is fire…"

"What did you say your name was?" Misty asked, still frowning in concentration as the three of them tried to place Molly.

"Miranda," Molly said airily, patting her Teddiursa soothingly. It hiccupped, and she envisioned lush green meadows, flooded beaches, and a large Entei. She felt a pang of longing for the Entei that she and the Unown had made in response to her own desires…

"Doesn't ring a bell," Ash announced. "Nice to meet you. I'm Ash Ketchum, and this is Pikachu, my best…hey, where's Pikachu? Pikachu? _Pikachu!_"

_But then again, Entei is always with me,_ Molly thought. _In my mind, my memories, my heart. And…I could see him if I wanted to. But I can't. _Walking around casually with an Entei at her side was sure to get her arrested. That didn't stop her from wishing her Entei could walk around in public view unhindered.

"Pika!" The small yellow-furred Pokemon ran up to the group with a large bottle of ketchup, which it popped open and lapped at happily.

"Pikachu, where'd you get that from?" Ash asked, and Molly smiled down at the cheeky mouse. The smile didn't reach her brilliant azure eyes, but she watched, amused, as a hot dog stand owner scratched his head in confusion several yards away.

"Pika pi," Pikachu said in consternation, and waddled over to her. _Oh, no,_ Molly thought as the Pikachu greeted her cheerfully. "Pika! Pika pi, chu, pika," it jabbered, dropping the ketchup bottle to hug her. Or rather, hug her leg. "Pika?" the small mouse said in disbelief. It was asking her where she had been and why all the two-legs seemed to think she'd been dead. Molly shook her head furiously, desperately.

"Pikachu, you must be mistaken," Ash said, chuckling as he picked Pikachu up, ignoring its furious struggles to snag the ketchup bottle. "This is Miranda, and we've never met before. Sorry about my Pikachu," he added to her. "I guess he just really likes you. He does this a lot with pretty women." He winked at her, and she had to physically fight the bile rising from her stomach.

"Ursa," her Teddiursa said crossly. She patted it gently behind its head as soon as she was sure she wouldn't be sick.

"Next," the registrar called, and Molly escaped the trio, relieved. "Paperwork?"

She handed her forms over to the black-haired woman, who checked over the forms to make sure they were all filled in correctly. "Molly Hale?" she said sharply as she entered the information into her computer. She handed Molly a packet and said something about rules and a contest schedule, but Molly was worrying about something else entirely. She took it without thinking as she panicked.

_Oh, no. Please don't let them have heard t—_

"Molly Hale?" Ash echoed from somewhere behind her, and she froze. _There goes my cover. _"Did…did she just say Molly Hale?"

"I knew it," Brock exclaimed excitedly. "I _knew_ I'd seen her before!"

"But that's impossible," Misty cried.

"Pika!"

The registrar ignored them and shooed her away. "Next," the registrar called, and Molly made a snap decision. Ash, Misty, and Brock would all have to stay to register in the tournament, and she could see that they would bombard her with questions that she couldn't answer if they caught her.

Molly had just enough time to catch the expressions on their faces before she walked calmly out of the Pokemon Center and into the sunshine. Behind her, she heard the three of them heckle the bewildered registrar frantically.

She ran.

* * *

"_Where are we? Who are you?" _

_The woman who had snatched her from the plane and brought her…wherever she was now didn't answer. She felt dizzy and disoriented from the sudden and frightening trip. Where was she?_

_After she felt the urge to vomit pass, she realized that the strange woman was talking to a small fairy-like apparition. It was small and green and had large, intelligent blue eyes. "You have to get away from here," the woman was telling it. "He'll kill you if he knows you're here. Thanks for your help." _

"_Bi," the small green Pokemon wailed unhappily. _

"_I know you used to be friends, I've told you at least twenty times that things are different now. I have the flute. I'll get you if I ever need help. Remember, you have to keep moving. He has agents tracking you down all over the last couple centuries." _

"_Brii," it contested stubbornly. _Is that a Pokemon?_ Molly wondered. Where the hell was she? _

"_No, he can manipulate Dialga's power and use it to travel, just like you. You need to go, _now_," the woman insisted, and Molly thought she saw a strand of red hair fly out from under the hood. The darkness of the sky made it hard to distinguish colors. "Remember, keep moving. Stay near us; the Master won't endanger his past self to hunt you. Try to stay in a time before you and that Suicune meet him, okay?" _

_After another discontented trill, the odd Pokemon disappeared in a swirl of color. _

"_Th-that was a Celebi!" Molly gasped, her brain suddenly registering the tiny green creature. Celebi could travel through time, couldn't it? Was she in the future or the past? _Why_ was she in the future or the past?_

_The woman's face was hidden from her, but she seemed to be glaring at her. Molly quailed, a million questions running through her mind. How could this Master, whoever he was, use Dialga's power? Wasn't Dialga a deity of…time? _

_Suddenly, Molly realized the urgency of the situation and decided that the woman, whoever she was, wasn't trying to kill her, but the Master, whoever _that_ was, might be. _

"_You shouldn't say that name here if you want to stay alive," the woman told her shortly. "Follow me. Ruby, Nala, make sure she doesn't get jumped." _

_A purple-black Starmie and a Vaporeon materialized out of the forest around them and stood on either side of her. Molly frowned as her mind struggled to make sense of what was happening. Why did the woman's voice seem familiar? _

_She had been on the plane to meet with Ash, Misty, and Brock at a Contest site in Hoenn when the woman with the blue cloak had suddenly appeared in a whirl of icy blue and grabbed her by the arm as people screamed at the sudden appearance of a stranger. As the viselike grip closed on her wrist, Molly had felt the plane tremble as if it were hit by turbulence, and there was a bright flash of red-orange from the front of the plane. _

_The next second, Molly had been flying through what appeared to be a tunnel, although the tunnel was composed entirely of bright lights that made her nauseous to look at as they twisted and spun around them. She distinctly remembered feeling like she had been sucked into a giant vacuum. _

_The woman had kept a firm grip on her arm, and oddly enough, the woman's hood seemed to stay on despite the shrieking wind as they were hurled through the tunnel. She had tried to scream, but her voice had been snatched from her and thrown to hell. _

"_Molly Hale, you will die if you don't come with me," the woman said sharply. Molly shook her head to clear it and realized that the woman was already fifty feet ahead of her. The Starmie nudged her gently and she ran to catch up with the woman. _

_Curiously, Molly reached out to brush against the trunk of one of the monolith trees they passed and had to stifle a yelp when what appeared to be bark crumbled under her fingers, blowing away in a whirl of black-gray soot. _

"_Don't touch anything," the woman said. "This ash isn't natural. It will poison you if you absorb too much through your skin." _

"_How do you know my name?" Molly demanded as she dashed forward. "Who are you? Why was that tree made out of ash?" The woman ignored her, and she ground her teeth in frustration, keeping her silence because the woman seemed to get angrier when she talked. _

_The forest was impossibly lit up as the woman continued to stride forward. The sky overhead was pitch black, and yet everything was clearly outlined by some kind of gray light that came from the black sky. Some of the trees_ _seemed to be made from ash, but how was that possible? And why were only _some_ of them made from the sooty gray-black substance?_

_It was the middle of the night, Molly assumed from the darkness, and the light probably came from the moon behind the clouds that blocked out the stars. She looked up at the sky again and saw something that shocked her. Instead of clouds, the sky swirled in what appeared to be a vast vortex of purple-black substance that extended as far as she could see. _What?_ Molly gasped. _

"_We're here," the woman told her as they came to a sudden stop. The woman apparently noticed her staring upwards because she added, "You'll get used to it. I'll explain more when we're inside."_

"_Inside?" Molly asked curiously, but the woman had already turned away from her to face a large tree. If Molly looked hard enough, she could almost see a very slight difference in the texture of the tree trunk…_

_She heard a strange beeping sound, and suddenly a section of the tree trunk slid away to reveal a tiny metal room. "Get in," the woman said, recalling her Pokemon in flashes of muted blue light. Molly scrambled into the room, wondering why the light from her Pokeballs were blue rather than the customary red. The woman followed after her and typed something into a number pad on the wall, and the door slid shut. For a second, Molly panicked, afraid that the woman was going to kill her or trap her, but then the room gave a shuddering lurch and began to move downwards at a breakneck speed. _

"_It's an elevator," Molly realized out loud, and the woman snorted in a way that was so familiar that Molly was disturbed. Who was this woman? "Who are you?" _

_The woman huffed in annoyance and remained silent. Molly stared at the Vaporeon and the Starmie, and some sense of the woman's identity tickled the back of her mind, but she couldn't quite place it._

_The doors slid open again when they reached the bottom and Molly saw a large room consisting of crude stone walls, stone tables, and crystals that gave off a soft blue light. There were people in the room, most of them eating and talking at the tables. _An underground cavern?_ Molly wondered. _What are they hiding from?

"_Misty!" she heard someone shout, and she whirled around, looking for the redhead who traveled with Ash. Maybe Misty would be able to give her some answers, to explain that this was all a misunderstanding, that this was a dream…_

_Where was Misty? She looked around as people glanced upwards at them, but to her disappointment, she couldn't find the redhead among them. "Misty, what took you so long? It's midafternoon already," the same voice shouted. _

Midafternoon?_ Molly thought, confused. _No, it's mid_night_, isn't it? _The sky had been so dark outside…_

_The woman removed her hood, revealing vibrant red hair. "Sorry," she said, and Molly began to realize with a feeling of dread why her voice had seemed so familiar. "Celebi had to travel about six times within two minutes. I think a couple hours of error are an acceptable margin." _

_Molly didn't know what to think. She was in brain lock. She felt numb. _

_The red-haired woman with ocean-blue eyes looked at her with an emotion she couldn't read. "Welcome to the Resistance," Misty said._

* * *

**Questions? Comments? Concerns? Leave a review! Most of the confusing things introduced in this chapter and the next chapter are explained in Chapter II (third chapter including prologue), so read through that chapter to get a sense of what's going on. **


	2. I: What's Worth the Prize

**So since I'm eager to post the chapters I do already have written up on FFNet, my updates will come pretty quick for now. **

**Confused about what's been revealed so far? Don't worry, Molly is, too, so you're in good shape. This chapter and the next chapter will clarify a lot, I hope. **

**Enjoy! **

* * *

**_Ashes to Ashes_**

_Chapter I: What's Worth the Prize  
Nickelback, If Today Was Your Last Day_

It had been three days since the run-in, and still Molly didn't dare leave her room. The hotel had been rather obliging to her requests, bringing her meals three times a day and moving her up three floors after Molly remembered that Ash was a talented climber. Looking back, she thought herself paranoid, but she was secretly glad she had been relocated to the seventh floor.

The corner of her lips quirked upwards as she remembered when Brock related the story of how they'd saved Celebi once. _I think Ash just evolved into a Primeape,_ Brock had said. How many years ago was that? Eight? Ten? She sobered, hoping that Celebi had taken Misty's advice to heart and was staying in the past somewhere very far away.

Her memory of that narration turned bitter, spoiled by her memories of what Ash had done in her last five years. _What happened to him?_ Molly wondered, even though she knew the answer. But_ how_ had it happened? That was the big mystery that Misty had never solved.

She was sitting in her luxurious hotel room, staring out at the oceanfront she could see through her glass balcony doors. She had never been more grateful for the trust fund her parents had kept for her when she was young; at just over forty thousand yen – and that was after she'd spent two hundred yen a night for ten nights here for the blasted tournament – her bank account allowed her much more freedom than she would otherwise have.

_Of course, I could just teleport myself or have Lune teleport me from continent to continent_, she thought amusedly. _But I'd rather not risk materializing in a tree or something. And I'd have to explain how an Espeon could have learned Teleport. Or how a human who isn't Sabrina learned how to teleport._

That was something she wasn't looking forward to. She didn't even really understand it herself. It was some complex concept about how if a Pokemon learned to expand its mental barriers, it could learn any move it wanted to. Something about why Fire-types couldn't learn to use Water Gun unless they broke some mental wall down and learned how to use the power of different Pokemon types…

Her head hurt. How had Misty understood this stuff? Because Molly certainly didn't.

She was watching clouds drift by from her comfortable position on the sofa when red light exploded from her waist and a rather disgruntled Ninetales appeared in front of her.

"Nine," it said grumpily.

"Sepia," Molly admonished. "That's the fifth time you've broken out in three days." The golden-furred fox bayed at her. "You really need to get used to mechanical Pokeballs again."

"Nine!"

She sighed. "Fine, you can stay out." Immediately, her other four Pokeballs burst open, and she found herself blinking at her rather intimidating crew of battling companions.

"Gar," the spiky-headed purple apparition complained, and was joined quickly by her other Pokemon, all clamoring to be allowed to stay out of their Pokeballs.

"Fine, you pigs," she gave in after a few moments of listening to the chaos. The noise stopped immediately, as if her Pokemon were suspicious of her sudden change of mind. "But you have to stay in during the night."

"Espe," Lune said pointedly, and leaped up the bookshelf in the corner with incredible poise and settled down to nap there. She sighed at her stubborn Espeon.

"No, Crush!" she exclaimed as the Tyranitar in question nosed the flat, wall-mounted TV screen curiously, and she remembered that she had caught Crush as a Larvitar four years ago. It wouldn't have been in this world before, although it certainly should know about this world…

She started as the TV screen crashed to the floor and miraculously remained undamaged. Her Tyranitar at least had the decency to look sheepish as she bounded off the sofa and struggled to hang it back up.

"Gar," her Gengar said, annoyed, as her Ninetales poked its head through Gengar's body.

Molly watched, amused, as the five Pokemon quickly fell into chaos. Her Teddiursa joined them shortly, clambering into the middle of her curled-up Delcatty to build itself a fortress out of its long, wiry tail. "Ree," the lazy feline whined. She wondered why her Delcatty wasn't rushing around reacquainting itself with modern technology.

_Kit is probably just too lazy to do anything_, she observed dryly as her Teddiursa collapsed under the weight of Kit's tail and the Delcatty did nothing to help lift it. She paused to gaze inquiringly at the oddly colored Pokemon. As a Skitty, Kit had been abnormally colored – silver-furred instead of pink and cream – and as a Delcatty, it had become silver-tabby.

The phone rang, causing her six Pokemon to stop their noisemaking for a few seconds, and she ran to pick it up.

"Miss Hale, a taxi has arrived to take you to the Coliseum," a woman said into the phone, and she groaned.

"I'll be down in a few minutes," she replied, hanging up. Stupid, she told herself. You knew you couldn't avoid the outside world forever. Why had Misty wanted her to enter this tournament, anyways? The whole point of sending Molly back was to remain inconspicuous and figure out how to prevent the Pokemon League from destroying the world, and Molly couldn't see how entering an interregional tournament was going to help her stay under the radar.

_I'll never understand Misty_, she thought. And then, with a touch of melancholy, _And I'll never get the chance to, now._

"Sepia, please make sure they don't get into any trouble," she pleaded with her Ninetales, who was making faces at itself in the reflective glass doors. Sepia froze with an absurd expression on its face, swinging its head around to glare at Molly as if to say _Really? You're leaving me alone with them?_ "Sade, Lune, you're coming with me."

Her Gengar and Espeon protested vehemently as they were sucked back into the small red and white Pokeballs. She clicked them back into place on her lanyard and tucked them neatly into her purse as she beckoned to her Teddiursa and walked out the door. "If you don't break anything, I'll make you dinner," she added as she closed the door behind her, and instantly the strange scraping noises coming from the room stopped.

_Great_, she thought. _They're hungry again._

As she waited for the elevator to reach the ground level, she wondered how long this tournament could possibly drag out. It was the second day of preliminaries already, and still there was another day before all the registered trainers got a chance to battle once. Not to mention the ball in another two days.

_What genius thought a dance party would be a good idea?_ Molly wondered as the doors dinged open and the receptionist greeted her. She waved back politely, then scooped Dee up into her arms and made a beeline out the doors, where she could see the small boat that would take her to the stadium.

Her pale green dress flapped in the wind as she shielded her eyes from the harsh midday sun. "It'll be about ten minutes," the scruffy pilot told her as he steered them away from the dock in front of her hotel.

She sat by the sides of the small boat and didn't respond. As they sped through the busy canals, she stared upwards at the blue sky and bright sun, marveling at it. And she remembered the strange swirling vortex of darkness that she'd grown accustomed to during the last five years.

Blinking, for a second, she saw a vortex hanging in the sky, looming over her with its dark energies – and then in the next second, it was gone, and all she could see was the brilliant sunshine. She shook her head. Getting caught up in the past wasn't going to do her any good.

Thinking of her last five years brought to the front of her mind an itch – an itch that was the irritating reminder of the reason she'd been spared and sent back. The reason Misty had sacrificed herself to Ash so Molly could escape with Celebi.

_Not just herself_, something in Molly's mind whispered to her in melancholy. _Everything she lived for. By sending me back, she changed the past—and that means the world I was in no longer exists. The Master no longer exists…but neither do Misty or Tracey._

Goosebumps rose along her arms as she remembered that final chase to the Shrine of Azalea, the only place where Celebi could travel without interference from Dialga and the Master. "_By going back, you not only seal my fate, but theirs, as well_," Ash had screamed at her as his Pikachu smashed Misty into a tree with a sickening crash and Tracey's Scizor melted in the heat of Ash's Charizard's flames. Celebi's time distortion had already begun to warp Molly's vision as Ash shrieked in frustration. "_If you travel back and change the past, this world ceases to exist! They cease to exist! They…_"

Before he could say any more, Celebi had whisked Molly away. But not before she caught an apologetic look from Tracey that told her they knew what was going to happen, and they had come to terms with it. She just wished they had told her sooner.

"We're here, miss," the driver said, breaking her train of thought.

"Thank you," she responded automatically, handing a sum of yen to the pilot as she stepped gingerly off the boat and walked up the stairs to the large plaza. At the other end was the stadium, the Altomare Coliseum.

She was still lost in thought as she walked towards it at a leisurely pace, remembering the reason Misty and Tracey sent her back. Stop the Master and his League from destroying the world, Misty had told her, in whatever way you can.

What do I do? Molly demanded, frustrated. That damn Celebi had dropped her off so far back that she had no clue when the prophecy of the apocalypse would even begin. As far as she knew, it would take another four years or so.

And of course, Misty hadn't told her what exactly the prophecy of the apocalypse was, other than the obvious that it meant the end of the world.

She scrapped the rather appealing assassination plan that had begun to form in her mind, not looking forward to killing forty-odd Pokemon trainers – some that were already Masters, according to Misty – and then saving the world on her own.

She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she suddenly walked into something large and solid, and nearly fell after the collision. Her thoughts scrambled themselves as she tried to shake off the disorientation.

"Sorry," Brock said, and she cursed as she realized that she had indeed walked straight into Brock. Great. _One of the three people I'm trying to avoid, and I just have to walk into him._ "Wait, aren't you Molly? Molly Hale?"

She didn't answer him, but scooped her Teddiursa up in her arms and darted away. Before she could take more than two steps, though, Brock caught her arm and held her fast. She swallowed hard, trying to fight the nausea and the memories that overwhelmed her. Her arm ached, as if her body was remembering every individual fracture that had run up her forearm after Brock had shattered it.

_Run_, her brain shrieked at her. _He tried to kill you, remember? He tried to—_

_And I ended up killing him,_ she reminded the screaming voice. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that this time.

"Why are you running away?" Brock demanded, refusing to let her escape even as she tried to twist her arm out of his grasp. Dee growled in her arms, and unsheathed its claws. "Where have you been in the last five years? We thought you were dead."

Molly looked around her quickly, trying to find an avenue of escape. To her disappointment, there appeared to be none. _At least Ash isn't with him_, she thought. _So Celebi dropped me off five years after I "died." The same amount of time I spent there._

"I…I can't tell you that," she said finally, after a pause during which she considered her options. She settled on the least complicated one, though it wouldn't satisfy her captor.

"Why not?" Brock persisted. "You know you can tell me, Ash, and Misty. We won't tell anyone if you don't want us to."

She fought down bile as his grip tightened momentarily, remembering that the last time he had held her arm fast, he had broken her wrist in three places. She shook her head to clear it of those dark memories. Don't think about that, she told herself sternly as she looked for a way to respond without giving anything away. _This isn't the same Brock._

"I can't tell you," she repeated, and her Teddiursa squirmed.

She remembered Misty's last words to her before she'd gone with Celebi. _You can never tell them_, Misty had said as they dashed through the dark forest at breakneck speed. _If Ash and Brock find out what happens, they'll fight against it, and they'll never let themselves become Pokemon Masters. They need to save the world first._

_Find a way to keep them from destroying it._

Find a way, Molly repeated to herself, momentarily forgetting Brock, and she wanted to cry. _What do you expect me to do?_

"You're an imposter, aren't you?" Brock suddenly deduced, and she was brought back to reality with a jolt. "That's why you can't tell us anything about your past. Who are you? Why are you impersonating Molly Hale?"

She frowned at the conclusion. "I'm not an imposter," Molly said firmly, wishing he would let her arm go but offering nothing to prove or disprove that she was telling the truth.

"Then where have you been the last five years? Why did the world think you were dead?"

She looked at the stadium wistfully, wishing she had paid more attention to her surroundings while walking minutes ago. "I can't tell you," she said for the third time, and to her relief, Brock released her arm. She made ready to run.

"Then you have to be an imposter," Brock said. "Otherwise, the real Molly Hale would be able to tell—hey!"

She sprinted towards the stadium doors and the large crowd outside of it. Behind her, she heard Brock giving chase, but she slipped in between the first few people and was lost in the large mob of trainers and spectators waiting to enter.

There was a guard at the front of the crowd with a list of names. She made her way towards him, weaving through the people, and stopped in front of him. "Molly Hale," she told him quickly, and he waved her through as he crossed her name off the list.

Relieved, she walked into the waiting room behind the guard. It reminded her of a Pokemon Center with the TV screen, the tables, the chairs – it was like a lounge. Five other trainers were already there, and she saw her name and pairing posted on the wall.

Match #2: Molly Hale of Greenfield versus Michael Northrun of Lavaridge, it read, and a chill ran down her spine at the name Northrun.

Why does that name seem familiar? she wondered, feeling red flags go up in her mind. She was frustrated that she couldn't remember why the name rang a bell, and she was afraid because she'd long learned that if something was suspicious to her, it was _not_ a good thing.

_Northrun…Michael Northrun…_

"Dee, I think you're going to have to wait here while I battle," Molly told her Teddiursa, and it pouted, sheathing its claws as she sat in a chair opposite the TV screen. Beside her on the sofa, two other trainers – both boys – were chatting amicably.

She watched a battle currently in progress between a middle-aged man and a girl who looked only slightly older than herself. A Machoke was wrestling a Toxicroak.

To her surprise, she heard her name called after a couple minutes, and she saw that a referee was standing by a set of double doors, which she assumed led to the battlefield. As she approached, she saw a young man who seemed to be about her age walk towards the referee.

"Molly Hale and Michael Northrun?" the referee, who was dressed in black and white stripes, asked sharply, and they both nodded confirmation.

"You're up next. This round will be a double battle with two Pokemon per trainer. Do I need to explain any rules to you?"

"No," Molly and Michael said at the same time, and when he turned to introduce himself and shake hands, she couldn't slough off the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

"I'm Michael, but you probably already figured that out," he said as he held his hand out, winking. She couldn't stop staring at the sandy-blond hair and the startlingly blue eyes as she took his hand and introduced herself politely.

As he engaged her in small talk, she was preoccupied with the familiarity he exuded. She wracked her brain as to his identity, but to no avail.

"Are you ready?" the referee interrupted after some time, and Molly glanced at the man, nodding. "These doors will open in exactly two minutes. After you're finished with your battle, the exit is on the opposite side of the battlefield. Good luck!"

"Wait," Molly called, and the referee turned his attention to her. "Can I bring my Teddiursa as a spectator with me?"

"There aren't any rules against it, as long as it doesn't participate in the battle," he shrugged, and stalked away. With a shock, Molly glanced at the clock on the wall to realize that it was nearly noon.

Michael joked a bit as they waited for the doors to swing open, and she laughed out of politeness. Inside, she was still trying to place him, scouring through every memory she had. Maybe he was a famous trainer before I left, and he's still famous now, she reasoned with herself, trying to quash the strange uneasiness that had bubbled up. He seems nice enough.

A tidal wave of noise drowned out any thought or sound she tried to make as the doors opened and the crowd screamed their applause. She shrugged at Michael and they walked out onto the old dirt arena. She went left and he went right, and the announcer began to boom out over the ocean of sound.

As she was introduced, she smiled wryly and envisioned the media that would swarm her like a cloud of bugs after people began to remember that Molly Hale was a girl who disappeared five years ago, whose body was never found after an explosion.

She suddenly was struck by a thought. How long had it been since a real Pokemon battle – one that wasn't for survival? Shrugging as the announcer finished introducing them, Molly tossed her first Pokeball into the arena and fervently hoped that her Pokemon remembered how to battle without fighting to the death.

* * *

_"M-Misty?" she gasped in shock, staring uncomprehendingly at the woman who had brought her here. "Where are we? Why did you bring me here? When are we?"_

_The man who had called Misty's name walked up the steps to greet them and raised an eyebrow at Molly. "She isn't up to speed yet," Misty explained lamely, and the man laughed, shaking his long black hair._

_"Oh, I definitely won't envy you when that conversation happens," he chuckled, but Molly thought it was dark and unhappy and without much humor. Who was this man?_

_"No, you won't, because you're going to be helping me."_

_"What!"_

_"Misty?" Molly said, and the two adults turned to her. She fidgeted self-consciously. "Where are Ash and Brock? I thought you three always tr…"_

_She didn't finish her sentence because of the looks that had passed across both their faces. Misty looked half sad, half wistful, but the man with black hair just looked angry, but she didn't know if he was mad at her. "S-sorry," she stammered, wondering what she had said to justify such a strong reaction from the man. "Are…are they both dead? Or…?"_

_"We would all be better off if they were," the man hissed venomously, and Molly was taken aback. Ash and Brock, better off dead? "They've all but destroyed the world – which they will do, eventually, too. You know, you look exactly how I remember you."_

_Ash and Brock were…the bad guys? Molly wondered in confusion. What was going on? How did this man know her? "I-I…what? Have we met?" Molly finally said uncomprehendingly. "Who are you?"_

_He raised an eyebrow at her as a large Scizor jumped onto the ledge next to him. Molly shrieked with fear at the sudden appearance and skittered backwards, flushing as she realized the room had gone silent and everybody was staring at her unabashedly at her outburst._

_"We really need to get her up to date, Trace," Misty whispered, and she seemed to shake off the strange pallor that had claimed her as soon as Molly had said "Ash and Brock"._

_"Wait—Trace?" Molly suddenly registered the name, the black hair, the voice, the Scizor. "Tracey Sketchit?"_

_He grinned at her, but she didn't see it in his black eyes. "Long time no see, Molly Dolly," he said affectionately, punching her in the arm. She groaned at the nickname, forgetting her million questions for just a moment. "Of course, that tends to happen when someone's dead for eleven years."_

_It took a while for that to register in her mind, but when it did, her blood seemed to freeze. The million questions were back and they had brought friends. "D-dead?" she spluttered disbelievingly, not sure if she had heard him correctly. Beside her, Misty slammed her palm into her forehead as she felt her face drain of color._

_Tracey frowned at her stuttered denial. "She really doesn't know anything, does she?" he asked dryly to no one in particular._

_The world around Molly seemed to slow as she tried to comprehend the new piece of information. How can I be dead? she wondered absurdly. I'm right here! Alive!_

_"Thanks for breaking it to her lightly," Misty snapped. Molly felt numb. Dead for eleven years, she repeated to herself. How is that possible? "I just saved her from the plane. You could have at least waited for me to tell her where she is and why she's here."_

_"Wait," Molly cried, remembering the plane as Misty brought it up. The numbness bled away as quickly as it had come upon her. "What do you mean, saved me from the plane? My…my Pokemon! My Pokemon were on that plane!" She panicked as she realized that there was an accident on the plane that would have killed her, and that Misty had only just saved her. She remembered the strange tremor that had shaken the plane even as Misty had grabbed her arm, the strange red light…_

_Her Pokemon…what had happened to her Pokemon?_

_"Trace, do you have her Pokeballs?" she heard Misty ask, and Molly looked up, the panic receding but being replaced by a new concern. Why would they have my Pokeballs? she wondered. How could they have them?_

_"Sure do," the black-haired man affirmed, and held up a multicolored belt with four shiny spheres hanging from it. "Celebi almost missed the cave, though. You have to tell it to be more careful."_

_"You try time-traveling six times in two minutes and tell me how your precision is," Misty retorted. "We're lucky Celebi landed me in the plane and not a foot outside of it, ten thousand feet in the air."_

_"That…would be unfortunate," Tracey said, chuckling. "Give Celebi my regards next time you see it." The Scizor fluttered its wings, making a strange, metallic, buzzing kind of sound, and Molly realized it was laughing._

_"Wait, how did you get those?" Molly demanded, interrupting their banter and pointing at her Pokeballs. She was already sick of being ignored or otherwise forgotten. "I thought they were in the Pokemon storage on the plane!"_

_"They were," Misty said. "But they're here now, so you don't need to worry."_

_Molly clamped her mouth shut, thinking of the situation she was in right now and deciding that she might as well stay quiet, because no one was answering any of her questions. She accepted the belt gratefully – at least her Pokemon were safe – but the million questions had started to run through her mind again._

_"Anyways, you shouldn't keep them in Pokeballs like that. Anybody could take them and control them. And you're taking the fact that you've been dead for eleven years rather well. Are you alright?"_

_Molly looked up at Misty uncomprehendingly as Tracey took the belt back from her. "What do you mean? You use Pokeballs, don't you?" she queried, ignoring Misty's comment about her reaction (or lack thereof). She could feel the panic welling up inside her, threatening to overwhelm her. She pushed it down firmly. I'm alive now, aren't I? she told herself. Misty saved me. "And how would anyone control my Pokemon with their Pokeballs, anyways?" she added._

_Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tracey enlarge one of her Pokeballs. An Eevee popped out, purring, then noticed its surroundings and cowered tensely. "Vee," it growled as Tracey picked it up in his arms._

_"Don't hurt Lune!" Molly yelled, instantly regretting it. Her voice bounced back off the stone walls and resounded around them, magnified so that she wanted to cover her ears to protect them from the volume. Misty and Tracey seemed to be unfazed._

_"He's demonstrating something," Misty informed her placidly after the echoes died down. "Tell your Eevee not to follow orders from anyone but you."_

_Molly repeated the command warily, and her Eevee nodded in understanding, glaring up at Tracey. Then it cried out abruptly as both Tracey's eyes and the Pokeball in his hand flashed in the same moment. "Give your Eevee an order," Misty continued, ignoring Molly's shocked cry._

_"Lune, come here," she said tentatively, and frowned when her Eevee did not move. "Lune, come here," she repeated in a firm voice._

_Still her Eevee did not move. "What did you do to Lune?" Molly demanded, but she was more afraid than angry._

_"Eevee, go to Misty," Tracey said, pointing at the red-haired woman. The cute, furry Pokemon jumped out of his arms and trotted towards Misty._

_"What?" Molly exclaimed. "Lune, what are you doing?"_

_"Tracey broke the Pokeball using his mind and reset it," Misty explained as she picked Lune up, ignoring the hopelessly confused look on Molly's face. "It – and your Eevee – are now attuned to him. Tracey, give control back to her."_

_"What? He broke it with his mind?"_

_"It's complicated" was all the response Misty offered. Molly's head hurt as she tried to comprehend what had just happened._

_The Pokeball flashed in sync with his eyes again and Eevee twisted out of Misty's arms and bounded back to Molly. She frowned. "What did you do?" Molly said angrily, checking her Eevee to make sure it was unharmed._

_"I really hope your theory about the Unown is right, Mist," Tracey muttered as he contemplated her Pokeball. Both Misty and Tracey ignored Molly's exclamation. "If she turns out to be an ordinary Master…"_

_"She won't be," Misty said firmly. "She is by all means dead, so she should have the full extent of a Master's power, even without having channeled the Unown's power before."_

_"What do you mean, 'Master'?" Molly asked curiously, frowning, her anger and confusion forgotten temporarily. What kind of power did these people have if they could control other trainer's Pokemon by sheer force of will? "And what do the Unown have to do with this? Are they back again, is that why the world outside is so strange?"_

_"In your time, we called them Pokemon Masters," Misty replied, disregarding her other questions. "Like Lance, for instance – he's widely known as a Dragon Master, although few know what that title actually means. He can communicate with and manipulate any Dragon-type Pokemon in the world with his mind, and none will ever attack him if he wills them not to."_

_"He's also got the abilities that are unique to Dragon-types, such as a fire-breathing attack similar to Dragonbreath. He can also summon twisters on command," Tracey continued. He fingered Molly's Pokeball thoughtfully as she frowned, trying to understand what he meant. "Actually, maybe he wouldn't have those powers in your time yet," Tracey amended. "You'll understand what I'm talking about soon, I think."_

_He paused, looking at the small red and white sphere in his hand. "Misty, should I do the honors?"_

_Molly frowned as Misty hesitated. Was that what Dragon Master really meant? People called Lorelei a Water Master, she remembered. Did that mean the Lorelei had similar powers? And the rest of the Pokemon League?_

_"I don't see why not," the redhead finally replied. "We don't have enough time as it is, anyways. We can get her up to speed and train her at the same time."_

_"Train me in what?" Molly said crossly. "Can I please have some answers?"_

_"Train you to be a Pokemon Master – we can start now," Tracey replied. He ignored Molly's scream and, with a sound like glass shattering, he swung his arm and broke the Pokeball against the stone wall._

* * *

**Hopefully, the snippets from the past make the actual story easier to understand. If not, well...Molly is more confused than you are, so you're in good shape!**


	3. II: White Noise

**Third chapter (technically second...) is up. I wanted to give readers a reprieve from this confusing crap. If you read until the end of this chapter, a lot of concepts should be explained, so I didn't wait to post this chapter. Then comes the fun part of the story.**

**Oh, and I absolutely hate writing Pokemon battle scenes - I think they're not all that interesting in words. There will be a lot of them, but only necessary ones. **

**Enjoy!**

* * *

**_Ashes to Ashes_**

_Chapter II: White Noise  
__Cobra Starship, You Make Me Feel_

An explosion rocked the stadium, and Molly couldn't see her Pokemon through the clouds of smoke that resulted from the collision of her Gengar's Shadow Ball and her opponent's Vileplume's Solarbeam.

"Sade!" Molly shouted, and choked on the billowing smoke. "Sade, blow away the dust!"

Nothing happened, and the smoke began to clear on its own. When it had settled, she saw, dismayed, that her Gengar was laying prone on the ground, while Michael's Vileplume seemed to be uninjured. Curse Synthesis, she thought dismally as she saw that the flower on its head was twisting and undulating as it absorbed sunlight.

"Gengar is unable to battle!" the referee declared, and raised the green flag in the air. "Victory goes to Michael Northrun of Lavaridge!"

The crowd cheered so loudly that Molly thought her ears would burst, and her head rang with shouts as she recalled her Gengar. "Good job, both of you," she murmured to the two Pokeballs in her pocket, and was glad that advancement to the quarter-finals was determined by score rather than wins and losses. Otherwise, she would be out of the tournament already.

But why had Misty emphasized that she must win? Not for the first time, Molly was angry at Misty and Tracey for not telling her what to do, and for expecting that she would be able to unravel everything once she was back in her own time.

The raucous crowd cheered her and Michael out of the stadium as they walked towards the exit, and the announcer started to segue into the next match as the heavy metal doors closed behind them, extinguishing the ocean of sound like a flame doused by water.

The sudden quiet deafened Molly as they walked into a room that was remarkably similar to the waiting room on the other side of the stadium except for a desk where two women sat and a set of stairs behind the desk. The woman on the right looked up as the two of them entered. Molly was about to leave the room when the woman said, "Please wait here for a few minutes while the judges finish scoring you."

"Ursa," Dee complained, and Molly shrugged, exchanging a puzzled look with Michael as the two of them sat down in adjacent chairs.

"That was a great battle," Michael said, and she started, having already drifted into a maze of thought. "Your Espeon and Gengar worked well together."

"Thanks," she replied absently. "Your Vileplume and your Charizard are incredibly strong." And she meant it, too, especially after she was unexpectedly defeated. She was angry with herself for losing a simple battle when she'd spent the last five years fighting for much higher stakes than a tournament championship. She had frozen mid-battle, locked up in panic for no reason when his Charizard dive-bombed her Pokemon. Molly knew why she had reacted like that - it was too similar to the memory of Ash's Charizard blitzing towards Misty and her Pokemon.

_I need to get over it,_ she told herself firmly. _I can't seize up like that every time something reminds me of the Master. _

However, the uneasy feeling that Michael Northrun gave her hadn't gone away, and she was still trying to place him._ I know I've seen him before, and I know that fighting style._ There had even been a moment during the battle when, in a flash of clairvoyance, Molly knew that his Vileplume would combine a Petal Dance with Sweet Scent seconds before it happened. Why had she known that...?

Molly snorted and pushed it out of her mind. Petal Dance and Sweet Scent was a common combo for Grass-types. She was thinking too much into it. The two of them lounged in silence, and a minute passed before a commotion to her right caught her attention. A boy had run into the room from the stairs behind the desk and handed two packets of paper to one of the women.

"Michael Northrun?" the woman on the right asked, and he shrugged at her before rising and walking towards the desk. "These are your critiques from our judges. You're free to leave."

"Thank you," he said, accepting the papers. He turned back to Molly and brushed sand-colored hair out of his cornflower eyes. "I'll see you at the ball," he called to Molly, and pushed the exit door open and left her alone in the small room.

The door swung shut again, cutting off the sunlight that came from outside as the woman on the right said, "Molly Hale?"

"Ursa!" her Teddiursa said, cheered by the prospect of leaving as Molly strode towards the desk and accepted the second packet of papers. Molly Hale was printed in bold black letters at the top, and as she glanced down at the first page, she groaned. The judge's handwriting was nearly illegible.

She left the room and stepped out into the bright sunlight, and she marveled at the statues of Latias and Latios that were directly in front of her. Last time she'd been to Altomare, the city had been little more than rubble.

Latias and Latios, she mused thoughtfully, and wondered if she could hide from the world in that garden of theirs. I need a place to think.

After three days of locking herself in her room, Molly had no desire to return to it anytime soon, and as she strolled between the statues towards the taxis at the end of the dock, she deduced that Ash and Misty would not be wandering around the city; they would instead be watching Brock during his preliminary, which was later in the day. It was safe for her.

"Where to?" the pilot asked as she requested taxi service, and she told him the intersection closest to the garden, which she knew was at the heart of Altomare. She clutched the sides of the small boat tightly as the taxi pilot gunned them away from the dock and into the canal traffic.

She thought she saw Michael's blonde head on another boat as the pilot expertly maneuvered the taxi boat through the twists and turns of Altomare, before she could ascertain his identity, the boat passed, and she could no longer see him.

It was nice to sit on the boat and not worry about running into Ash Ketchum, she thought. It was nice to not worry about anything for just a few minutes, but as the boat flashed by numerous boutiques and accessory markets, Molly remembered that she still had to buy a dress for the ball. I'll do that in a couple hours, she promised herself, realizing that today might be the only day where she wouldn't run into people she wanted to avoid.

"Here we are, miss."

She thanked the pilot as he brought their taxi gently to rest, bumping slightly against the side of the canal as she paid him and ducked under a bridge before climbing the stairs up to the main roads.

The streets here were not as crowded as the ones on the outer skirts of the city, and Molly walked across the bridge she had just traveled under. The bridge led to a long passageway with metalwork and ivy spanning the whole length of it, and as she strode through it purposefully, she saw that a couple young Pidgey were playing in the birdbath.

"Ursa," Dee said, and the Pidgey looked up and twittered busily as they conversed with her Teddiursa.

Molly smiled slightly as she picked up snippets of their conversation, the event reminding her that she had the power to understand Pokemon, if not exactly a direct translation. "Come on," she cajoled her reluctant Teddiursa. "You can talk about that nasty Spearow you met when we come back this way."

"Ursa!" Dee wailed.

She turned to her right as the crisscross of iron and ivy ended and saw a shadow on the wall she faced, and sighed with relief as she walked into it. It felt like she was passing through a sheet of water, but she came out warm and dry on the other side.

Molly walked in silence, listening to her footsteps echo around her as she gradually passed out of the illusion and into the secret garden. She glanced around quickly and saw that the entire area was walled in by concrete, and realized that the garden was literally at the heart of the city.

Skirting the pool, Molly made her way towards the lonely swing on the tree and sat down on it, watching her Teddiursa play with a Wooper that had jumped out of the pool to investigate the newcomers.

Multitudes of other Pokemon gathered around her curiously, but she ignored the Nidoran couple nosing at her ankles as she tried to organize her thoughts. When one of them bit her ankle experimentally, she reached down and scratched the small pink Nidoran behind its ears. _Why do Pokemon always bite my ankle?_ she wondered absently.

An explosion of water scattered the Pokemon around her, and a large something rocketed out of the pool beside the swing Molly was on. She flinched away but gathered herself quickly. If she focused hard, she could just barely see the wavery outline of a large mass as it flew up and around her. Gusts of wind buffeted her hair as a female voice shrieked, _Intruders! Intruders! Get out of my garden!_

She blinked, allowing some of her power to bleed into her vision and render the world in strange red and blue hues. She located a large Pokemon-shaped blob of red circling around her and frowned. True, having what Misty had termed true sight was invaluable, but she didn't like using it. The vision – similar to infrared sight – disturbed her. It didn't track heat, but rather energy, whether it be electricity, heat, or the power of a Pokemon or a Master. The more power someone or something was using, the clearer their shape would be, and brighter red.

The red blob suddenly dived at her, still shrieking with enough mental force that Molly flinched at the volume. _Stop!_ Molly projected thunderously, and braced herself as tailwind gusted around her. The red blob pulled sharply out of the dive and suddenly became blurred, the outlines fuzzy, and she saw the fuzzy Teddiursa-shaped blob cringe at the force of _her_ telepathy.

Molly blinked again, and her vision returned to normal. Hovering in front of her was a pink-hued dragon, visible once more in regular sight. _You can hear me?_ the Pokemon inquired disbelievingly.

"Yes."

Latias blinked at her and approached cautiously. Molly glanced downwards quickly and noticed Dee still covering its ears, glaring at her pointedly, and she shrugged.

_What are you?_ Latias said, and Molly thought that if Pokemon could frown, Latias would be frowning. _You have the shape of a two-leg, but your mind is like mine._

"That's complicated," Molly said dryly, reluctant to explain what a Pokemon Master was to the naïve dragon. "Long story short, I'm pretty much a Pokemon. My name is Molly Hale."

_What species of Pokemon are you?_ Latias persisted curiously, sniffing her hair. Molly fought the urge to swat the dragon on the nose. _You don't seem like any Pokemon I've ever seen before. You smell like a two-leg. Wait, did you say Hale? The spiky-haired two-leg mentioned you before, I think. Do you know him? The one with a Pikachu?_

So much for peace and quiet, Molly sighed. "It's a long story," she said shortly, and ignored Latias as it chattered at her about the many laudable qualities of the great Ash Ketchum.

First things first, she decided as she resolutely tuned Latias and her babble of white noise out. All Gym Leaders were members of the Pokemon League, more or less, but not all of them were or would be Masters. And even then, there would only be one Master of each type alive at any given time; that was how it worked, according to Misty.

Thirty-two Gym Leaders plus the Elite Four in each region made about fifty members of the Pokemon League, and she scrapped all thoughts of assassination plans. _It might be the easiest way to prevent them from taking over the world,_ Molly thought, _but it's pretty much impossible to kill fifty people subtly._

So what, then? She only knew a few Masters who had already been Unlocked and had come into their powers; Lance, the Dragon Master, was one, and Sabrina had discovered her powers at an extremely early age. Sabrina, Molly remembered, was one of the strongest members of the Resistance. She'd had the power for so long that she was pretty much immune to the side effects. That didn't make logical sense in Molly's head - the longer you had the power, the closer to losing sanity you were - but Sabrina was an ally, so Misty's team hadn't cared.

Lorelei, too, was a Master – a Water Master, if she remembered correctly. _That's why Misty was an Ice Master, not a Water Master like everyone thought she would be_, Molly remembered. Who else, then, had been denied their powers simply because another person got to it first? And who else had already been Unlocked without her knowing?

She gripped the ropes of the swing tightly as Latias took it upon itself to try to launch her as high as possible. The red dragon giggled in delight.

She frowned. Something wasn't right with that theory…Misty and Tracey had mentioned very briefly once that Ash had originally been an Electric Master, not a true Pokemon Master, but they hadn't elaborated on how he had acquired his additional powers.

But she distinctly remembered how Lt. Surge, also a member of the resistance, hadn't been a Master. Ash wasn't the Electric Master anymore, so by all rights, Surge should have been Unlocked. It wasn't because Surge didn't have the potential; he'd been tested positive by Sabrina.

_Why didn't I ask them about this before?_ Molly berated herself as the swing rocketed to dizzying heights. And then she was abruptly frustrated because it was just another piece of the massive puzzle laid out before her, and angry because it was just another piece of information that Misty and Tracey had withheld from her.

She forced herself to calm down, and breathed deeply as she contemplated the other members of the Pokemon League. _I never saw that before because I was too busy staying alive_, she consoled herself. _The problem is, anyone has the potential to be a Master, not just members of the League. It's just that the people who are strong enough to have the potential usually fight their way to the top._

_And the League is the best of the best._

Molly frowned, wondering not for the first time how Ash seemed to…attract people who would eventually become Masters. What was he, a nexus of supernatural gravity? That little blue-haired boy with the glasses had become a Normal Master, hadn't he? And as for Brock and Misty…well, no one had expected Brock to become a Fire Master, of all things, instead of Rock or Ground or Steel. But, if she thought about it hard enough, it made sense: the Pokemon that Brock bonded the most strongly with was his Ninetales, and later on a Growlithe given to his care by an Officer Jenny in Jhoto had become his fast favorite, if she remembered correctly.

Tracey was an exception, Molly thought as she ran through a list of names of Masters and compared it to the list of members of the League. Having been Unlocked before they discovered Bugsy, the leader in Azalea, also had the potential to become a Master, Tracey had become a Bug Master – much to everyone's surprise.

This, then, presented a challenge. Unlocking the power of a Pokemon Master was usually completely random and required extreme emotional or physical stress or trauma, and the Resistance had thrown a monkey wrench into the equation: her.

Molly wasn't supposed to be alive; she wasn't supposed to be able to change the world around her, but she did. What if she prevented someone from being Unlocked, or caused someone else to come into their powers?

After eight agonizing minutes of trying to think of all the possibilities of changes she'd cause, Molly realized that it wasn't doing her any good. Her head hurt.

And then there was that prophecy that Misty mentioned, but Tracey himself had said that neither of them knew what prophecy it was or how to find it. All they knew was that it foretold Armageddon.

_Damn it_, she growled, growing obscenely frustrated again. _Damn it all to hell._

_You are in great turmoil_, Latias suddenly commented sagely, breaking her thoughts.

_Thank you, captain obvious._

_You're welcome,_ Latias replied, oblivious.

* * *

_"A true Pokeball?"_

_Molly stared at the small indigo-patterned orb nestled in Misty's hand. It had coalesced there seemingly from thin air, but as it had, Molly had felt a…tickling sensation. For some reason, it felt similar to the way it felt using the Unown's power all those years ago._

_"It's a Master's Pokeball, made from the power of a Pokemon Master," Tracey offered when Misty kept her stony silence. "Because they draw directly from the trainer him – or her – self, unlike mechanical Pokeballs, nothing short of the death of the trainer can break them like I did with your Eevee's Pokeball."_

_She wasn't sure she understood, but she nodded anyways. She frowned as a question occurred to her. "Where do the Pokeballs go when they're…unsummoned?" she asked, letting the unfamiliar term roll off her tongue experimentally. "And the Pokemon? They don't just disappear into thin air."_

_Tracey grinned. "You've always been a smart one," he commented cheerfully. "That's the beauty of using true Pokeballs; you notice how they're made purely from the trainer's energy? Well, depending on the Pokemon's type and the element the Master has power over, the Pokemon essentially dissolve into their purest form – that's energy – and when the Pokeball is unsummoned, both the power used to create it and the power that the Pokemon has are…returned to the trainer. So the trainer gets his or her Pokemon's power in addition to regaining what he or she spent making the Pokeball. Oh, you look confused, Molly, what's wrong?"_

_Molly blinked, her mind still trying to comprehend what Tracey had just rattled off. "So the Pokemon…lives inside the trainer as energy?" she finally asked in a lost voice._

_"The Pokemon exists not just as energy, but as power," Misty said softly. "A Master's power is the same power that resides in Pokemon and makes them different from, say, a regular bird or a regular housecat."_

_"Uh…huh?" Molly muttered, completely uncomprehending._

_Misty sighed, frustrated. "Would a demonstration help? Come here, Ruby," she called, and within seconds, the almost-black Starmie was at her side. "I'm an Ice Master, see," she explained to Molly, "but Ice is close enough to Water that I can still summon and unsummon Water-types."_

_"What she means," Tracey interrupted, "is that you can only really keep Pokemon of the same type as your mastery. Otherwise your power won't match your Pokemon's power, and your true Pokeballs won't be compatible with your Pokemon. So it's nearly impossible for Misty to keep non-Ice or non-Water types in her true Pokeballs, see? Without killing either her Pokemon or herself, anyways."_

_Slowly, Molly nodded, beginning to understand the concept. "I…I think I get it," she whispered, feeling rather overwhelmed. "But…I still don't understand what you meant when you said that the Pokemon becomes power that is returned to its trainer."_

_Tracey nodded towards Misty. "She's about to demonstrate. As an Ice Master, Misty has some control over water, but not as much as a true Water Master would. However, she has more power over solid water – ice – than any Water Master. But ice and water are the only elements she can touch on her own."_

_Molly blinked. He'd lost her._

_"Return, Ruby," Misty commanded, and to Molly's disbelief, instead of the red light that came from mechanical Pokeballs, her Starmie seemed to dissolve into swirling purple-blue haze that matched the color of Misty's true Pokeball. The haze glowed mutely like a cloth-covered lantern as it flowed into the true Pokeball in a condensed stream. Misty turned to Molly, smiling slightly as the small indigo ball melted away. The air seemed to tickle Molly's skin. "Now watch closely."_

_Misty faced away from Molly and Tracey with her palm opened towards the wall. Suddenly, Molly felt the same tickling sensation again, and a second later, a small burst of electricity flashed from her palm. She heard Misty cry out sharply, as if in pain._

_"What!" Molly exclaimed, more confused than before. "I thought you said she only had control over water and ice!"_

_"But her Starmie can use Thunderbolt," Tracey answered matter-of-factly, and Molly closed her mouth as what he was saying dawned on her. "That's what we mean when we say that the Pokemon's power – power, not just energy – is also Returned to the trainer. So it's as if your Pokemon are always with you, in a way," he finished, grinning._

_"So technically, Misty could use any type attack, if her own Pokemon can use it," Molly concluded excitedly. "Then what's the point of being the master of just one type if a Master can use any Pokemon attack?"_

_"We can't," Misty said shortly as she rejoined them. She held up her hand, and with a shock, Molly saw burn marks on the palm. "It's extremely difficult to teach a Pokemon a new move like that, especially if their types aren't the same. And if the type of the attack isn't very compatible with the Master's type, the power harms the trainer, too."_

_"I—why did you show me using Thunderbolt if you knew you were going to hurt yourself?" Molly asked softly, gazing at the red-haired woman who refused to meet her eyes._

_Misty shrugged. "It's a small price to pay for saving the world," she muttered so quietly that Molly almost missed it._

_The three of them lapsed into silence as Molly's Eevee continued to nap in a corner against the stone wall. "What does any of this have to do with me, though?" Molly finally ventured, glancing at her Eevee and wondering why it hadn't tried to escape. Its Pokeball had been broken, after all. Yes, they had bonded extensively as Trainer and Pokemon, but she'd heard stories about even Pokemon close to their Trainers escaping after their Pokeballs had been broken. Usually in an accident or some sort of tragic incident._

_Tracey beamed at her, and Molly couldn't help but wonder how he remained so bright when everyone else seemed to act as if their doomsday were tomorrow. "You, my dear, are our secret weapon against the apocalypse," he replied, ignoring her bewildered and surprised stare, "because you, Molly Dolly, are a Master. A true Master."_

_"A what?"_

_He shrugged at Misty. "She's all yours," he said helpfully._

_Misty sighed. "The potential to become a Pokemon Master is far from common," she began, and Molly had the feeling she was being lectured to. "Elemental Masters like me are even rarer because unlocking the power in someone requires…a great deal of physical or emotional trauma. Usually, unlockings involve both. Dual-type Masters are next to nonexistent; maybe one in a million would have that kind of potential. But you, Molly…"_

_Misty's voice trailed off for a moment. "You are a true Master, Molly," she murmured. "A trainer with the ability to wield every kind of Pokemon type there is."_

_Molly shook her head. How could she believe so strongly in something that can't possibly be true? she wondered. "How do you know I'm a Master in the first place?" she challenged._

_Tracey shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "We've had you tested several times over the last few years. Well, your last few years, anyways; about fifteen years in the past for us. I don't think you would have noticed, though." He smirked. "We take pride in how subtle we are when it comes to changing the past."_

_"For good reason," Misty snorted. "What good would it do if we erased the future we were saving the world in?"_

_"Ah, Misty dearest, you're no fun."_

_"So you've been…spying on me?" Molly asked incredulously, unsure of how she should feel about having been tailed for a few years. She shuddered slightly; whatever she felt, it wasn't very pleasant, and it didn't make her trust them any more._

_"More or less," Misty shrugged indifferently._

_"But how did you know that I would…have the potential?" Molly continued, struggling to word her jumbled, confused thoughts. Her mind was still trying to wrap itself around what Tracey had tried to explain to her. Something else occurred to her. "And besides that, I've never had any…traumatic events, so wouldn't I not be unlocked yet?" She stumbled over the unfamiliar terms._

_Tracey grinned at her. It seemed like he was perpetually smiling. "Ah, but you're forgetting that our Misty here is nothing short of a genius," he chuckled, ducking a swipe from the aforementioned genius. "We didn't know you had the potential to be a Master. We were sitting around, trying to come up with a way to find a true Master like yourself in a pool of millions and millions of people, when suddenly Misty mentions you and the Unown."_

_Molly frowned briefly before Tracey continued, "See, she was the one who suggested that we test you first because you had already touched a Pokemon's power and lived through it with no detrimental effects, as far as she could tell from what she remembered. Not that any of us – you included – recognized what was happening as using true power at the time. Oh, don't look so surprised," he added at what must be a flabbergasted expression on her face. "People accidentally touch the power all the time—it's just that only people with the potential to be Pokemon Masters are likely to survive those accidents."_

_"And you didn't touch the Power by accident," Misty added in her somber voice, her azure eyes flashing. Molly turned to look at her. "From what I remember, you drew on the Power from the Unown intending to use it to create your dream world. Even though you didn't know what you were doing at the time – none of us did, like Tracey said – you had already been unlocked."_

_"What?"_

_Tracey shrugged apologetically at Molly. "It's complicated, and mostly speculation," he told her kindly. "You're a special case—it didn't take severe trauma to unlock you because of the Unown. Or so Miss Genius over here thinks, anyways." He jerked a thumb at the red-haired woman. "Your unlocking just kind of…happened, because you were so immersed in the energy from the Unown that it kind of just diffused into your body and acted as a key, same as trauma would. And Unown are famous for acting as…amplifiers, if you will, for the power. Oh, don't look surprised, Molly Dolly—did you honestly think that such a large number of Unown would lose control of their own power unless they were channeling something that was many times stronger?"_

_Molly blew a breath out of her nose, still frustrated with her inability to comprehend their crazy theory. "What?"_

_Tracey glanced and Misty and added hastily, "Maybe we should leave that for another time."_

_"Then how did that tell you I had the potential to be a…a true Master?" Molly demanded, irritated with her inability to wrench a single answer she could understand from the two of them. "For all you know, it could have just been the Unown channeling their own power, or I could have just been a Psychic Master."_

_She was suddenly furious at Misty and Tracey for snatching her out of her own life to place her in…whatever this place was, whenever this place was. She was beginning to doubt if they were actually Misty and Tracey…they had no right to steal her here! They had no right…_

_"Do you remember the Pokemon you used in the battles against us?" Misty asked shortly. "And of course, your Entei."_

_"He wasn't my Entei," Molly retorted, memories of a crystalline Kingdra and Phanpy and, of course, Teddiursa flashing into her mind. "And those were just illusions, anyways. They weren't real Pokemon." She couldn't help but feel a stab of disappointment that they hadn't been real._

_Tracey's smile became smug, knowing. "Ah, but that's the beauty of it, Molly Dolly," he said in a contented tone. "Not even a hundred Unown could create illusions of Pokemon and give them the powers they would have if they were real. Capiche? The Unown can only amplify power that already exists or create the illusion of power, so they couldn't have created an attack like, say, your Entei's Flamethrower. Maybe the illusion of an attack, yes, but from what I heard about that escapade, your Pokemon's attacks were very real."_

_"Yes, that Entei nearly killed Ash and his Charizard," Misty added absently, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere. Molly sighed at that particular memory; she wished she hadn't been so stubborn as a child._

_Then what Tracey was trying to explain crashed down on her like a brick wall. "Do you mean that…?"_

_"That you were the one who _created_ those Pokemon?" Tracey laughed, watching the epiphany come over her. "That's correct. So we knew that if you tested positive, you would have enormous potential. For some reason, even as a child barely six years old, you already had instinctive control over the Power, and you'd already used it, so you had to be Unlocked. And you hadn't just used it; you made your own Pokemon. That's something that not even the most powerful Masters have an easy time doing, yet you did it as a child. Of course, your power _was_ focused exponentially by the Unown…"_

_Molly felt hope flare in her chest—strange, irrational hope that she tried to squash because it would mean that she believed these wild speculations, but she couldn't resist asking. "So…when you said that it was my Entei, does that…does that mean he's still part of me? So...so he could be real again?" Entei had walked in her dreams for years after the Unown escapade. Her loyal, fiercely protective, oblivious Entei…_

_Tracey opened his mouth to answer, but then hesitated and glanced at Misty. When it became clear the Misty wasn't paying much attention to their conversation, he sighed. "It might be possible," he conceded grudgingly, "but…I can't be sure."_

_The hope in Molly's chest flared again almost painfully, and she realized that she would do whatever it took to bring that Entei back. "If I was the one who…created him," she said mostly to herself, "then I sure as hell can bring him back."_

_Misty nodded approvingly at her, though her blue eyes still had a faraway look in them. "Yes…" Misty mumbled, sighing forlornly. "I want to bring him back, too."_

_After a confused second, Molly realized that she wasn't talking about Entei._

* * *

**Still confused? Don't worry, Molly is, too. No, but seriously, if you're still confused, send me a message or leave it in a review so I can add some clarifications to the next few chapters. **


	4. III: Eyes Like Open doors

**Last pre-written chapter. From here on out I'm winging it. Though I did have a rather amusing (and crack-y) discussion with a friend of mine about the ways the plot could turn out. I'm rather partial to some of the crazier (and darker) ideas that popped up during our talk. Basically, we worked out that this fanfic is going to be one gigantic mind screw. Possibly worse than Inception. Anyways, lots of characters you'll recognize from here on out. **

**Asukaforever94 - yes, it's been a while since I first tried to post this, but I had too much going on and I ended up taking it down so I could get a more coherent idea for it before actually attempting to finish it. Glad to see you are still here! **

**Anyways, disclaimer, don't own Pokemon, yada yada. Enjoy! :)**

* * *

_**Ashes to Ashes**_

_Chapter III: Eyes Like Open Doors  
__Evanescence, Bring Me To Life_

"Thank you for letting us stay," Molly said graciously as she concluded that her speculation wasn't achieving anything except giving her a headache. Standing up and dusting off her dress, she began to walk towards the garden entrance. Her Teddiursa hastily followed.

_You're leaving now?_ The red dragon hovered next to her as she skirted the pool and made for the wide marble steps. _Why?_

Shrugging, Molly continued walking. She doubted that Latias would know what a ball was. "I need to run errands," she answered instead of saying she needed to buy a dress, her footsteps quiet and muffled even on the bare marble steps. "Today. Come on, Dee." Risking an encounter with Ash and his friends wasn't something on her agenda, and she'd already stayed in the garden for almost an hour and a half without accomplishing anything but giving herself a headache.

"Teddiursa!"

"Woo-pah, woo-pah," the Wooper protested as Dee trailed after her obediently. "Woo-pah."

She found herself smiling at the small Wooper as it bounced up to her and her Teddiursa. "Yes, we'll visit again," she said gently, and it gave a small "Woo-pah" of satisfaction and trundled away.

_Do you really mean that?_ Latias asked in a rare moment of seriousness.

Molly sighed and didn't answer. "Thank you," she said instead, patting the dragon on the head fondly.

_For what?_ Latias said curiously as Molly stepped through the stone wall illusion and out into the narrow cobblestone road.

"I hope you never have to find out," she whispered sadly as she quickened her pace to a brisk walk. Her Teddiursa lagged behind slightly before scampering forward on all fours to catch up with her.

"Dee?" it demanded in a moment of insight.

She sighed. "Yes, she's the one who saved me from Ash," Molly answered, and her small companion fell silent as she stooped down to let it hop onto her shoulder. For a second, Molly couldn't see anything but the garden she had just left, burning and destroyed and littered with corpses. A shadowy figure was stalking towards her, and she felt real terror as she relived one of her first confrontations with the Master, four years ago.

Not her first, but the first one she could remember. For a second, Molly frowned, thinking as she often had about what had happened the first time she encountered Ash. All she could recall, no matter how hard she strained, was being hunted until she was bruised and bloody. The last thing she remembered was the Master standing over her, a dark, ominous figure, and reaching for her with an outstretched arm.

Then…nothing. Just a fuzzy gray wall of _blank._ Not even Sabrina's hypnosis had drawn out the truth of what transpired that night.

Shaking her head to clear it, Molly sighed, her mind returning to matters at hand. Latias didn't know who she was personally; that much was certain. But had the feminine red dragon known who Molly was when it attempted to rescue her? Latias had recognized her name…Ash had mentioned Molly?

She shook her head. Latias rescued her in what must be at least six years in the future, and even for an intelligent creature like that red dragon was, six years was a long time to keep a simple name in memory.

"Teddi-ursa!"

Molly's stomach rumbled, too, and she grinned ruefully at the small, incorrigible bear on her shoulder. "I'm hungry, too, Dee. What do you want for lunch today?"

She only had a second's warning before her the two Pokeballs on her belt burst open and her Espeon and Gengar began to clamor for food. She sighed. "You really need to get used to those Pokeballs again, okay?" But she left them out as they reached the end of the small street and emerged next to a large plaza.

Though there must have been tens of thousands of spectators at the Coliseum, this market plaza was still moderately crowded. No one gave her Pokemon a second glance; many of them had their own Pokemon outside their Pokeballs. She dodged to one side as a small Pichu scampered towards her, chasing an Ariados happily as both Pokemon's trainers ran after them frantically.

There was a small café at the corner of the plaza with a large Misdreavus sign over the door. It looked quiet and less ostentatious than the other eateries that littered the square. Molly made a beeline for it, dodging groups of people as they strolled around the plaza and made for quite a lot of white noise. A small bell tinkled as she pushed the door open and stepped into a small, quiet one-room restaurant.

A motherly woman in a crisp blue shirt and black skirt bustled up, beaming at her. "Just one, dear?" the woman asked, and then hurried Molly to one of the few empty tables. Most of the other patrons didn't even glance up at her; three were reading newspapers and another four were on laptop computers. There was one man, though, who met her eyes briefly.

She shivered, averting her gaze from those intense blue eyes as she sat down. His eyes were still on her, she was sure, as she opened a small, decorated menu and browsed the selections.

"Espe," her Espeon warned as it settled down near the foot of her chair. It swished its tail back and forth, the blue gem on its head glowing faintly. For a split second, the gem shimmered with an eerie green glow, and then Molly felt a faint whisper in the air around her. She sighed. _Lune really needs to stop extending that damn Protect barrier around me whenever he doesn't feel safe. People are going to start asking questions._ "Espe?"

"Yes, that's Riley," Molly mumbled, trying to act natural under the blue-eyed man's intense scrutiny. The waitress approached her table again, stepping gingerly over eating Pokemon and patting an overly friendly Growlithe on the head when it bounced up to her from its food, wagging its tail. Why was Riley here? Was he participating in the tournament, too?

"Espe!" Lune said emphatically, disgruntled.

"Have you decided on anything, miss?" the waitress with bobbed hair asked politely, flipping open a small note pad. "And don't forget, there's a section for Pokemon in the back of the menu, too."

"Oh, I'll have…" Molly chose the first item her eyes landed on. "…the Porygon Pasta." She flipped to the back of the menu. "And three orders of Munchlax Munchies, please."

The waitress nodded and left. Molly kept her back turned to the blue-eyed man as she hissed at her Espeon, "You need to realize that no one is trying to hurt me here, in this time." When Lune shook its head stubbornly, she snorted. My damn Pokemon. "Lune, you can't go around shooting Flamethrowers at everyone who wasn't on our side like when we were with Misty and Tracey, all right? I don't know how to explain why my Espeon knows how to use Flamethrower."

"Espe," Lune repeated obstinately, still glaring at Riley and the slender Lucario next to him. Her Gengar was obviously having the same doubts, flickering between transparent and opaque and frowning at the blue-eyed man.

Molly sighed, resting her head in her hands with her elbows on the polished wood table. The murmur of conversation and eating noises continued in the background as she contemplated how to make her Pokemon realize that they were in a different time, now. A different world. Her Gengar, at the very least, should know that. Not that she wasn't flattered by her Pokemon's attention, but people were going to get suspicious if her Espeon decided to use Flamethrower to torch some suspicious-looking character...

And why was Riley staring at her in the first place? She hadn't known him personally before Misty had snatched her, so he couldn't recognize her in the here and now. There were plenty of other pretty women in the café…

_But he's not staring at me that way,_ she amended reluctantly. To her left, a man dressed in a business suit called a waiter over and asked for the check while his Gligar snuck a piece of fruit from his slice of cake.

"Teddiursa," Dee hissed, and Molly glanced up from her refractory Espeon and shattered her Espeon's Protect barrier around her with an angry flick of her finger. Immediately, Lune jumped up in surprise, growling, but Molly was distracted by something else.

_Damn, I forgot. Riley can read auras_, she reminded herself, cursing silently. _H__e won't have seen anything like mine. That's why he's staring at me_. She could almost picture her aura herself, a pulsing, undulating myriad of strange, muted colors and thrumming with energy. With power. It was too late to block her aura off completely like she had learned to do five years ago.

Molly nearly jumped when the cheerful waitress returned and set a plate of steaming, oddly-shaped pasta in front of her and two dishes of some kind of Pokemon food in front of her Espeon, Gengar, and Teddiursa. "If there's anything else you need, don't hesitate to holler," the bubbly serving girl told her, and then skipped away without waiting for a response.

"Ursa," Dee said, and dug into the food enthusiastically. Her Espeon ate in a slightly more dignified manner, but her Gengar swallowed its food whole in a rather comical fashion. It then proceeded to fade slightly and swing its head around, glaring suspiciously at everyone in the café.

For the next half hour, Molly kept up the pretense of being completely at ease but half-expected Riley and his Lucario to jump her at any second. Her fears were groundless, though, and as she paid the check, she murmured, "Sade, there's really no more need for that. Don't you remember this old world? No one is going to appear out of nowhere and stab me with a knife." Her Teddiursa stole her plate and began spearing a few remaining pieces of pasta.

The Gengar shook its head stubbornly, continuing to gaze around with wild red eyes. "Gar," it hissed as Molly stood up and walked out of the café. The serving girl called after them with a cheerful thanks as she pushed the door open. The bell tinkled again as Dee scampered up to her them.

Molly sighed as she felt the hum of psychic energy around her again and looked down at her Espeon. "Lune," she began, "you can't keep doing this." When the graceful feline shook its head and snorted, she shrugged and took out a Pokeball, returning Lune in a flash of red light. The Protect dissipated around her.

She turned to her Gengar and returned it, too. No chances.

"Ursa?"

Molly stooped down and allowed Dee to clamber up her arm to rest on her shoulder in its customary place. "Yes, we still need to go shopping while we have a chance to," she replied. She scanned the plaza and a modestly decorated sign that advertised a family-owned, family-run dress boutique a few streets down. She hurried across the paved brick square, trying not to attract too much attention with her Teddiursa. "There's a store a few minutes away."

As she made for one of the small side streets on the west side of the plaza, she heard a high-pitched bell tinkling behind her, and she froze for a second before continuing on.

"Ursa," her Teddiursa warned, and she patted it on its head comfortingly, acknowledging that someone had indeed followed her out of the café.

_Riley, damn him,_ she thought as she sauntered down the small street and turned onto the next one, still searching for the boutique. If it weren't for him…

_…May wouldn't have died._

Molly could hear the light footsteps and pawsteps behind her despite Riley's cautious, sneaking walk and his Lucario's natural stealth. Five years of trial-and-error survival weren't going to leave her very easily, so when one of them knocked a stone loose and startled a couple of street Pidgey, she whirled around and snapped off her aura instinctively. Her Teddiursa unsheathed its claws, but they faced an empty street.

_That's not fair,_ Molly finally decided. _Riley was being controlled by those two creepy girls, Liza and Tate. Nothing he did was his fault._ That didn't lessen the pain of losing May.

She decided that confronting Riley and his Lucario, whom she could sense crouching behind a set of fire escape stairs, would not help her in any way, shape, or form. Straightening up, Molly continued to walk down the narrow, apartment-lined street until she came across a wider street with moderate traffic.

"Ursa!" Dee exclaimed, sheathing its claws as it gestured towards a storefront several blocks to their right. Molly followed its gaze and found herself staring at a cluster of several stores, one of which was a boutique called Enchanted. "Teddiursa!"

"Yes, that's the one," she sighed. _At least he can't follow me into a dress store without looking suspicious, and with my aura blocked, he and his Lucario won't even see me. And I'll be able to avoid a confrontation._

_Hopefully. _

* * *

"Do you know where the Grand Riviera Hotel is?"

"Yup," the taxi driver replied to Molly, starting the small boat's engine with a disproportionately sized roar. "It'll be about fifteen minutes."

Molly thanked him and sat on the single bench on deck, closing her eyes and enjoying the chance to bask in the warm sunlight, something she hadn't had the chance to do in five years. She had told the boutique owner to send the dress she chose to the hotel so she wouldn't have to carry it with her. Overhead, hundreds of Pelipper, parcel carriers in Altomare, flew this way and that. She imagined that the one flying straight above her was carrying her dress.

Relaxing was hard, but for the next fifteen minutes at least, she didn't want to have to think about saving the world, then destroying the savior of the world so he wouldn't destroy the world he had saved.

God, that made her head hurt. She shook her head stubbornly, refusing to dwell on it any further. She opened her eyes as the boat made a sharp turn without slowing down, lunging forward just in time to snatch her Teddiursa out of midair as it lost its balance and toppled over the side.

"Ursa," Dee said sheepishly, hiccupping at her as she held it up by the scruff of its neck with one hand, amused. "Teddiursa!"

For the next few minutes, Molly tried her best to relax and frolic with her Teddiursa – who, she remembered, had spent most of its adolescent life fighting for hers in that bleak, bleak future – and making sure it didn't fall overboard. They were stopped at a traffic intersection when she thought she heard someone yell her name.

"Hey!" the shout came again, and with a pang of dread, she recognized the voice. "Hey, that's Molly!"

_Oh, no. _Molly cursed. She didn't need to turn to her right to know that Ash, Misty, and Brock were pulling up somewhere near her. "Ursa," Dee said urgently, and Molly walked to the bow to speak with the driver.

"Is there any way we can get through this intersection now?" she asked calmly despite her instincts screaming at her to run, get away, _run_, _GET AWAY FROM_—

"Sorry, ma'am," the cabbie replied apologetically, gesturing to the traffic lights above them. They blinked red. "I can't get us out of here until that light turns green. Laws are laws."

Molly glanced to her right, noting that Ash's taxi had pulled up next to hers and they were frantically trying to get her attention. Making a snap decision, she pulled four bills out of her wallet and handed them to the taxi driver. "This should be enough to cover fare. There's an extra fifty in there if you forget I was ever on this boat."

The cabbie's eyes widened, but he frowned, hesitant to take the money. "What's going on?" he inquired cautiously as Molly walked the length of the boat and stopped on the left side.

"Fifty for you to keep your mouth shut," she repeated in a voice that warranted no argument, and the cabbie swung around to face forward again, whistling.

"_Molly!_" Ash cried.

She hadn't meant to turn around. She hadn't meant for the Ash and his friends to really see her. But she did. Her hair flying in the breeze, she whipped her head to the right, startled by the desperation in his voice.

The two of them stared at each other, her blue eyes wary, his brown eyes confused. She felt like she could see straight through Ash, with his dark eyes like open doors. And she could tell that his mind was running a mile a minute, trying to reconcile the bubbly, flirty fifteen-year-old Molly Hale with this new distrustful, adept-at-avoiding-confrontations Molly Hale.

Then she turned away, and the moment was gone. She needed to focus. Creating a mental image of her hotel room wasn't easy; she could easily have been imagining any generic room if it weren't for the lopsided TV in the room from when her Tyranitar knocked it down.

Being seen in public like this, she decided, was a far better alternative than having to face Ash and his friends. She wasn't ready for that. Molly took a deep breath and let power well up inside her. Ignoring cries of shock and protest from nearby spectators (namely Ash and co.), she grabbed her Teddiursa and dove overboard...

* * *

...and landed on the floor of her large room back at the hotel, rolling with momentum into the wall with a loud crack. Molly lay there, exhausted and utterly spent. Stars swam in her vision, and not all of it was from the dizziness. Her Pokeballs ruptured again as her Gengar and Espeon broke free to reprimand her for expending so much energy.

"Espe," Lune meowed angrily, its forked tail whipping back and forth in agitation. "Espe."

"Yes, I forgot how draining it was to teleport without having you, okay?" Molly groaned, pushing herself up off the floor and barely avoiding crushing her disgruntled Teddiursa. "It's been five years since I've had to keep you in a mechanical Pokeball, cut me some slack."

"Gar," her Gengar laughed, finding the situation funny for some reason. "Gengar, gar, gar, gar." It phased through the wall she'd collided against and informed the rest of her Pokemon they were home. Immediately the bedroom door slammed open and immediately her Ninetales bounced through and sat on top of her, purring. Her Tyranitar tried to stoop through the door, glancing at the doorframe in confusion when it couldn't fit through, while she could hear her Delcatty meowing impatiently at the large green dinosaur.

"Stop it, Crush," Molly sighed as she got up, pushing her Ninetales off, and tried to get through the door. "Come on, just back out of it." Her Tyranitar gave her a sheepish look as it tried to pull back but found that its headspikes had gotten caught on the top, wedging itself in. She rolled her eyes, pulled out a Pokeball, and returned it before walking through the now-unblocked doorway. Her Delcatty jumped her, sniffing a couple times around her ankles before plopping itself down with a yawn and going back to sleep.

Molly shook her head. "Lazy little Kit," she mumbled, prodding the snoring cat with her toe as she made her way to the kitchen. Before she could reach for the refrigerator door, though, the phone rang and the main desk told her she had a package waiting for her. She sighed.

Picking up the dress took her three minutes, but those three minutes were torturous. Looking around vigilantly to make sure Ash and co. hadn't gotten her address from her taxi driver, Molly all but sprinted to the front desk, snatched the parcel, and ran back to the elevator with a quick "Thank you." She smashed the up button frantically like those idiots in those movies she used to watch who always think that pressing the button repeatedly somehow makes it come faster.

When she made it back to her room without encountering anyone she didn't want to encounter, Molly heaved a sigh of relief and tossed her dress onto the sofa carelessly as she sank into the seat next to it. _Well...forty hours to kill without being able to go outside,_ she mused, flicking through the TV channels and stopping on what seemed to be a replay of the day's battles. A Machoke and a Toxicroak were wrestling, and she realized her battle was up next. Shrugging, she propped her feet up on the glass table in front of her and watched as the Machoke managed to slide under the more agile Toxicroak and chuck it into one of the stadium walls, stunning it but making no move to take advantage of the situation.

Molly sighed. It was going to be a long forty hours.

* * *

_"Again."_

_There was a pause of silence, broken a few moments later as a sound like glass shattering echoed off of the stone walls._

_"Again," Misty said, and Molly wanted to hit her. Instead, she focused her anger into forming a little glasslike sphere of power in the palm of her upraised hand, watching with frustration as nothing happened. She strained so hard her head hurt, and she felt incredibly silly. She had to look odd, standing with her hand out and staring murderously at nothing._

_Suddenly, a flash of white sparked in her palm and exploded, filling the cavern with the sound of glass shattering again. Molly forced herself to stay still as pain flashed up her arm and straight to her head as if the explosion actually had driven shards of broken glass into her skin._

_"Again, Molly."_

_"What!" she exclaimed in protest, ignoring her throbbing head for a brief second. "I need a break! You can't expect me to just accept the fact that I apparently have psychic, superhuman powers and that I need to use them to make my own Pokeballs and then succeed on my first try. I barely know what I'm doing, and I can hardly feel this 'power' you keep telling me to reach for!"_

_Tracey smiled at her slightly, but Misty appeared unmoved. "You need to learn this now, so that your Pokemon can't be used as leverage against you," Misty said coldly. Molly flinched. "Besides," the red-haired woman continued, "that wasn't your first try; it was your eighteenth. And you do not have psychic or superhuman powers. You have the power of a Pokemon Master. Now do it again."_

_Molly gritted her teeth, biting back the sharp retort that was on the tip of her tongue, and held her arm out again, straining so hard to maintain a hold on the power and create a perfectly round Pokeball that her headache intensified and her eyes hurt from staring._

_Suddenly, an immense pressure pressed down on her mind, and she screamed … and stopped as something seemed to change abruptly. Something felt…different in her mind, like something was occupying a part of her headache. It wasn't a separate entity, a mysterious presence in her mind, anymore; it seemed to have…welded with her. She no longer felt the strain from keeping the power there in her hand, but her body felt like it was on fire. Was that blood running through her veins or ignited gasoline…? It burned her like a volcano burned grass._

_"Now call your Eevee back," Misty said, and her voice seemed muffled, muted, as if Molly was hearing her from under the water._

_She tried to force her body to obey her commands, but her arm was frozen, and her palm was open, cradling the small purple ball in its center. Her burning blood felt as if it were turning slowly to ice, prickling her skin like thousands of tiny needles._

_With great effort, she managed to force her mind into lucidity, blocking out the pain and the strange torrent of power she felt in her mind, and formed a single, coherent thought._

_Return!_

_Before she could voice it, the sphere of energy in her hand exploded into brilliant white light that sparkled like a multi-faceted diamond and burned her with its white-hot glow. Her blood suddenly froze into shards of ice that blinded her with a burst of pain in her arm._

_She heard a scream and vaguely recognized it as her own._

_When she fell back into consciousness, she was laying facedown on the floor, the rough stone scraping against her cheek. She gasped for breath as she rose unsteadily, flexing her arm where only moments before, her efforts had burned her like fire._

_She realized that the fizzling feeling she felt all over her body – like an itch buried so deep that no matter how hard she scratched her skin, it would still be there – was power running through her. She had felt something similar when the Unown had created her dream world, and when she had made her own Pokemon to battle with._

_Except this time, there was something…different about the power. Different from how it felt to use it with the Unown. Like something had been added subtly and changed it so that instead of flowing through her, it flowed within her._

_She saw belatedly that her Eevee was gone. "Did…did it work?" she breathed. Her head spun, and she was afraid of the alternative if it hadn't worked._

_"Well done," Tracey said from her right, and she turned to face him and Misty as he applauded slowly. "It only took you…nineteen tries. No, I'm _actually_ being serious, nineteen is pretty damn good compared to what it took most of us."_

_"Now call your Eevee back out," Misty ordered her without acknowledging her success._

_Molly was bewildered for a moment, wondering what she should do. Hesitantly, she raised her arm and opened her hand again, imagining the deep purple ball of energy that she had coalesced there only minutes before. Absently, she wondered why it was purple._

_To her surprise, the torrent of power in her mind responded instantly to her focus, bursting forth as if from behind a dam. The feeling was comparable to a sudden head rush, but the Pokeball crystallized in her hand without any great effort on her part._ Lune?_ Molly thought tentatively, and again, before she could voice a command, the Pokeball burst open in the same, sparkling white light as before. She felt something trickle out of her, and the light faded to reveal a very disgruntled Eevee._

_"Vee," it complained, shaking itself and stretching before dashing into Molly's arms._

_"I don't think I've ever seen someone do it so instinctively," Tracey commented as she hugged Lune. "And at least we know that she _is_ a true Master, just like—"_

_"We need to do this with all your Pokemon by the end of today," Misty said, cutting across Tracey. "We can't risk your Pokemon being used against you as leverage."_

_Molly quailed at the thought of repeating the painful, exhausting process three more times. "Where's my Teddiursa?" she asked instead, forcing her qualms down. "Dee doesn't like being in a Pokeball. Actually, I don't think Dee's ever been in a Pokeball before this flight."_

_"Never?" Misty said sharply, and sagged, as if relieved. "Good. We can attune your Teddiursa to a true Pokeball now."_

_"Now?" Molly wailed, cringing as Misty gazed at her coldly._

_Tracey picked up a Pokeball from her belt and tossed it outwards, and almost immediately a small Teddiursa burst from it in a flash of dull red light, shaking itself vigorously. "Dee!" Molly cried, and her Teddiursa ran towards her gratefully as Tracey smashed the Pokeball on the ground._

_Molly noted with interest that unlike her Eevee, her Teddiursa didn't react to its Pokeball being broken. She frowned and reached for the current of power, growling with frustration as it slipped out of her grasp a few times. Why had it bent to her will so easily only moments before?_

_"You need to feel it, not clutch at it," Misty supplied, watching Lune chase Tracey's Scizor around, much to the consternation of the armored bug Pokemon. "You need to let the power come to you." _

_Fighting the urge to retort sharply, Molly closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe deeply, focusing on how the river felt in her mind rather than trying to reach out for it. _

_She felt stupid. __It was like listening to the rush of swift-flowing water without actually seeing the river, she thought as she sensed the golden torrent of power sweep through her. She could feel it like an itch in her mind that she couldn't scratch, and it irritated her. Molly couldn't touch it or draw from it, but it was there. Like seeing stars in your vision, and trying to touch the stars._

_It was maddening._

_She found that she could manipulate where the river flowed. No, manipulate wasn't the right word…she could change it in a way that she found she couldn't describe. Like pushing the stars to one side or another just by seeing them differently without looking directly at them or touching them._

_So she opened her palm and slowly diverted the power, feeling it diffuse her hand and form a glowing sphere in the middle of her open palm. She opened her mouth to call back her Teddiursa, but, once again, the ball burst into light before she could voice the command._

_"Good," Misty said shortly, and as the diamond-like light faded, Molly found herself pleased to have earned a compliment from this terse, cold woman, so different from the perpetually-angry-at-Ash, fiery adolescent she remembered. "You can keep your Teddiursa out if you want."_

_Molly nodded and bent the stream of power towards her hand again, noticing a different change in the power compared to when she'd called her Eevee back. It was just the slightest bit easier to summon the Pokeball this time. "Come out, Dee," she called as the power seemed to melt upwards into a translucent beige sphere. She tossed it outwards experimentally, half-expecting the ball to stick to her hand like chewing gum, half-surprised when it did fly away from her before bursting into the shimmering white light._

_A red glow lit the small cavern briefly as Tracey fished out another Pokeball and released this time a Vulpix. Molly watched the Scizor and her Eevee run out into the main cavern as her Vulpix wailed in confusion._

_"Again," Misty said, and Molly returned her gaze and thoughts to her Vulpix, reaching for the golden torrent of power once more, knowing better than to complain about her pounding headache._

* * *

**After another couple "transition" chapters for Molly, everything should start to get much, much darker. Virtual hugs for whoever leaves reviews! **


	5. IV: Used To Be

**Story starts to take a tad dark towards the end here. Sorry it took so long for this update - I've been busy with finals and settling into an internship. Why are these chapters all so damn long? **

**Enjoy!**

* * *

_**Ashes to Ashes**_

_Chapter IV: Used To Be_

_Kelly Clarkson, Behind These Hazel Eyes_

"If it makes you feel any better, I'll keep you guys with me instead of in mechanical Pokeballs, alright?" The only response the tall brunette received was glares. It was a good thing she didn't have an Arbok.

_God, my Pokemon are unreasonable,_ Molly huffed, finally dragging herself off of the couch and into the bathroom to prepare for the mandatory ball. She still didn't know what kind of genius thought a dance was related to a Pokemon tournament in any way, shape, or form. She couldn't call in sick, either; apparently, the twenty-four semifinalists would be announced during dinner, and those not in attendance automatically forfeited their spots.

The emerald green dress she'd picked out wasn't flattering, but as she unwrapped the parcel and shook it out, Molly was glad for its boxy shape. She was slender - a result of eating only enough to survive for five years - and she had nothing to show off, really, other than muscled legs and a flat stomach. The other dress she had considered was simple and burgundy, but it had been strapless. There was no way that dress would have stayed up on her.

"Sade, scout around a little and check the venue out," she called, and with a short gleeful chuckle, her Gengar swooped out of the room and vanished. "Wait! You don't...know where it is," Molly trailed off lamely, resisting the urge to sigh. She nodded at her Espeon, whose eyes began to glow white-blue as it communicated with her trigger-happy Gengar.

Her hair was already done, swept up in a neat side bun. Simple, not fancy enough to be noticed, out of her way. Hopefully, the dark green of her dress wouldn't stand out too much. Molly wished, for the first time in five years, that she had a bust large enough to support strapless dresses like the burgundy she'd looked at. _That_ dress had been inconspicuous enough for her tastes. _Of course, not having... assets ... was an advantage, _she conceded morosely, the tiny shred of excitement she'd managed to dredge up fading as she slipped into the dress. _Not being too well-developed meant not being a target to rape._

_Not being a target like...like May was, and Misty's sisters, and Solidad, and..._

"Espe!" her Espeon mewed crossly, tail whipping from side to side. The irritated meow broke Molly out of her thoughts, and Lune's eyes returned to their normal color. She forced herself to focus on matters at hand...like getting dressed in time for the ball. There wasn't a lot she still needed to do. Put on the dress, and some makeup, maybe. Just enough to be polite, but not too much to make her eyes stand out.

Not like she knew how to put on makeup, anyways. Her fifteen-year-old makeup kit that she used to wear for the occasional Pokemon Contest was a bit too simple and childish to work on her at twenty years old. She did, however, buy a makeup set upon her return to the present, as Misty had requested. So while her Espeon sniffed and attempted to maintain communication with her frisky Gengar, Molly sat down at the dresser, in front of the mirror.

She then proceeded to stare at the small box of cosmetics in consternation.

_Well,_ Molly thought resignedly as she pulled out bottles and palettes, _it's safe to assume that "foundation" goes on first, right...? _But what the hell was "waterline gloss"? Spotting a cream-beige-brown eyeshadow palette, she fished it out and found brown eyeliner. A natural tone and simple makeup would make her stand out less. Shrugging, she snapped the palette open and swept some dark brown through the crease of her eyelids and lined her eyes.

_Good enough,_ she affirmed, checking her reflection in the mirror after repeating the action on her other eye. Dark enough to wear to a formal event but subtle enough to not draw undue attention to herself. After a second's hesitation, she took out the small container of bronzer and powdered her face lightly.

The dress was long enough to cover her feet and she was tall enough for the dress frame, so she pulled on her regular flat sandals. Molly hadn't worn shoes with heels for five years and she wasn't planning on being caught in a confrontation with shoes she couldn't run in. Though now that she thought about it a bit more, snapping off stiletto heels and using them as last-ditch weapons wasn't unappealing...

She shook her head. She didn't need weapons like that in this time; her own Pokemon would suffice for fending off any attacks. Molly really, really hoped she wouldn't need to fend off attacks, but preparing for the worst always seemed to pay off with her luck. She shuddered in anticipation suddenly and a sinking feeling stuck in her gut. She cursed; something was going to happen tonight whether she wanted it to or not.

Was this why Misty had emphasized that Molly _had_ to win this tournament? Maybe she wasn't supposed to win at all - she just had to be present at the ball tonight. So what major event was Misty trying to change?

_No use thinking about it now,_ Molly reasoned resignedly, walking out of the bedroom and towards the kitchen counter to retrieve her small silver clutch. "Ree," Kit whined as Molly nudged the sleepy feline out of her way. "Reeeee!"

"Return," Molly huffed, rolling her eyes as her Delcatty vaporized into swirling white energy and condensed into a small translucent sphere in her hand. Her Ninetales slunk up to her and purred agitatedly until it was unsummoned into its Pokeball as well. She checked the clock on the wall - 5:24 p.m.

_Sade,_ she thundered telepathically to her Gengar, hoping that it would hear her wherever it was. _Sade, if you aren't back here in six minutes, I am going to chain you to this hotel room and you won't be able to get out for the rest of the night. _The venue for the ball was nearly twenty minutes away and it started at 6:00, so Molly figured that leaving at 5:30 would put her there in good time. As she returned her Espeon and released Crush from its mechanical Pokeball, a wispy purple streak of substance came zooming in through a wall.

"Gar," the purple streak wailed piteously as the purple haze coalesced into a more substantive form with hands and feet. "Gengar!" Molly returned her Gengar and her Tyranitar, one in each hand, and sat down at her kitchen table, still thinking about what could happen tonight. Was she supposed to save someone? Intervene in something? Change the outcome of the tournament?

_Well, if Misty wants me to win this thing, of course I'm going to change the outcome, _she told herself, feeling a little silly. Her Espeon wandered into the main room with Dee on its back. "Sorry, Dee," she told her Teddiursa as she returned both of them into their respective true Pokeballs. "I can't bring you with me tonight. You're too recognizable."

_5:30_, her Pokegear read, so she shrugged on her white trench coat and left the room, hoping that she would at least be able to enjoy the food at the five-star restaurant.

Fortune favored her today, it seemed. Her table wasn't in the middle of the grand dining room, but it wasn't on the edge, where someone might be able to pick her out of the hundreds of trainers and their families. Molly had been able to slip into the venue without anybody recognizing her and confronting her, though she had received some leering stares from young men and some judgmental ones from girls as she found her assigned table. Most of the trainers she encountered quickly dismissed her without paying much attention to her.

Thank god no one she knew had been assigned to the same table as she'd been. There were eight to a table, and the seven other trainers (and six older adults whom she'd assumed were family) she was seated with were friendly enough. Before the food was served, they'd all introduced themselves - not that Molly remembered any of their names - and made small talk.

There were two times when Molly thought she'd seen Ash, Misty, and Brock and ducked out of the way. When the others had stared at her, she'd shrugged it off with a casual "Ex-boyfriend." The two other girls immediately shook their heads and gave her a sympathetic smile, while the five males blinked at her owlishly.

The food was served half an hour after she arrived while someone - probably important - gave a commencement speech and she tuned him out after a few seconds. She caught the words "honored guests" and "renowned researchers" somewhere in it as she nibbled at the fruit appetizer they'd brought out. Why would they invite important people to speak at an event as trivial as a tournament?

Maybe that was her misjudgement. If this tournament had been trivial, Misty wouldn't have emphasized that Molly _had_ to win. The fruit tart finished, Molly sat back and decided to pay a little more attention to what was going on. After a few minutes, she gathered that the competition wasn't just a tournament; it was a researchers' convention, as well. The theme this year was apparently extraterrestrial research - that would explain the strange, abstract space-themed decor.

"...meet the esteemed members of the intercontinental Research Pentagon," the speaker was saying. His hands were flailing about enthusiastically. "Without further ado, it is my honor to present tonight Professors Oak, Elm, Ivy, Birch, and Rowan!" Five adults at the front and center table stood up and turned, waving to the room of three or four hundred trainers. Molly snuck a glance out of the corner of her eye as she sat without facing the stage directly, glancing around the room and trying to locate potential threats.

Or potential confrontations. _Same thing,_ she sighed.

"And now our guest speakers for the night," the man on the small stage at the front of the room exclaimed, and Molly wondered if he was going to start jumping up and down with excitement. Then a slight movement in the shadows behind the speaker caught her eye and instinctively, she stood up, tensing and drawing confused stares from the people around her.

Something was wrong. Molly didn't know why she started to move towards the front of the stage, but she had the feeling that the two men who had materialized from the shadows on either side the stage weren't supposed to be there..._Wait, what? _"The two leading experts in extraterrestrial and interdimensional Pokemon - I am honored to present to you Professors Jonathon Lund and Spenc—"

The stage exploded.

In the half-second between the blast and the ensuing panic, Molly jumped onto the nearest table, kicking away plates and glasses to get a better vantage point. She nearly tripped over her long dress hem.

And then people panicked, most of the trainers screaming and making for the two large doors. A good portion of them made it out within seconds. Molly cursed, catching sight of the two shadowy men she'd noticed before as they grabbed hold of Professor Oak and released their Pokemon. Another explosion gouged out half the back wall to reveal another twenty or so men dressed in black. _Did none of these trainers think to stand and fight? What kind of Pokemon trainer ran away from a battle where lives were at stake?_

Her thoughts paused for a second. _Every trainer would,_ Molly realized belatedly, _because none of these people have ever had to battle to the death before._

"_Professor Oak!_" Molly heard a familiar shout and whirled to her right to see none other than Ash Ketchum - in a suit - leaping across tables with his Pikachu darting in front of him, ignoring Misty's concerned yell of _"Ash!"_

"Pikachu, Quick Attack those guys!" The small yellow mouse flashed from table to table with an increased burst of speed as it attempted to reach the front table where the two men and their Magmar, Magneton, and Banette had snared two of the professors and two men Molly didn't recognize.

Ash's Pikachu slammed into an invisible wall just short of its targets, and a leering Alakazam flashed into existence in front of the small mouse. Molly glanced around her - the majority of the trainers had escaped, but the speaker was lying against the wall, bloody and bent at an unnatural angle. _He's dead,_ she realized as she saw one of his arms on the ground a few feet from where he was.

_Whoever these people are, they're not afraid to kill. _That was good - the people she had fought for the last five years hadn't been afraid to kill. She was on the same level as they were, and they had no clue what was going to hit them. _This was what Misty wanted me to be here for._

As the score of men dressed in black stormed the dining room, Molly closed her eyes and concentrated. She rematerialized in the middle of the struggling professors, who let loose started cries at her appearance. "Do any of you have Pokemon?" Molly yelled as the Banette focused its attention on her, eyes glowing. The two shadowy men never missed a beat. Without letting go of Oak or the other man - a middle-aged man with long gray hair - both of them released more Pokemon, adding a Croagunk and a Venomoth into the fray. "Get _out_ of here," Molly hissed at the remaining adults, wondering why none of the Professors had called out Pokemon to at least defend themselves with. Somewhere behind her, Ash's Pikachu squealed in pain as it slammed into a table and shattered it.

"Pikachu!" Ash screamed as the small yellow mouse lay prone on the ground amid broken glass, whining. Molly gritted her teeth and slashed upwards at one of the shadowy men with her right fist. Her uppercut erupted in flames, leaving behind a blinding streak of light and setting the man's uniform ablaze. The other man threw the two hostages behind him with an explosion of red light that grew into a Venasaur with vines wrapped tightly around Oak and the gray-haired man and a Blastoise that doused the burning man.

Shit. She couldn't hurt the Venasaur without strangling or burning the two researchers.

_Nothing else for it,_ she thought as she summoned her first two Pokemon. Beside her, a purple-haired woman released an oddly-colored Vileplume and focused on the Alakazam. "Crush, get those two away from that Venasaur," Molly commanded as she dodged a blast of fire from an Arcanine, and her Tyranitar roared its challenge to the green plant Pokemon. "Sade, that Banette! Don't do anything stup—"

Her Gengar cackled gleefully and became a streak of purple miasma as it bounced towards the sinister puppet ghost, and the fight quickly dissolved into a circling chase as the two ghosts tried to outmaneuver each other. Flashes of white-blue, red, green, and yellow indicated that her Gengar had _not _taken her warning of not using abilities it could normally learn and was instead content with using whatever move it wanted to use.

Molly yelped as one of the black-clothed men caught her from behind in a tight grip on both her shoulders. "Now what's a pretty thing like _you_ doing here, in the middle of the fight?" the man breathed in her ear. Instead of answering, Molly rammed her elbow backwards, winding him as she slammed into his stomach and spun around to face him. To her left, Ash was valiantly trying to to reach his Pikachu as he was swarmed by six or seven of the black-clothed men. An Onix came out of nowhere and bulled some of the men aside, but not hard enough to deter any of them. _Brock's Onix?_

"Ash!" came Misty's voice, and Molly instinctively snapped her focus in the direction it had come from. "Ash, over there!" Molly saw Misty standing in the corner of the room, holding her own against three men and their Golbat, Charmleon, and Drowzee with what appeared to be a cute flying eggshell. Her blue dress was ripped, and she was pointing at the wall near the rubble that used to be the stage...where two boys were cowering in a huddle against the wall as one of the men advanced on them with a Sneasel.

"G'wan and ha' some fun wid dem," one of the other men called in thickly accented Common, an accent that Molly recognized instantly. _Oh, no._ "We ahn't here fa dem boys, just dem Unown men." That was all the urging the Sneasel and its trainer needed.

"_No!_" Molly screeched, throwing herself in their direction in a roll and parrying the Sneasel's claws with a vambrace that she'd crystallized on the spot. The lethally sharp claws struck against her forearm harmlessly and produced a loud, bell-like _clang_ that gave everybody in the room pause for a second. The armguard dissolved back into psychic energy as she sliced her right hand sideways at the Sneasel. A wide arc of fire sprayed from her palm, catching both the blue-furred weasel and its trainer off-guard. "Sepia!"

"What the—she just punched _fire_ at us!" the man in front of her exclaimed.

Her Ninetales exploded into existence with a vengeance, following Molly's burst of fire with a pulse of dusky black power that didn't do much to the Sneasel except annoy it but knocked its trainer backwards into a chair. "Nine!" Sepia bayed balefully, nostrils aflame and tails alight like a fox from hell. It howled and curled protectively around the two shaking boys, a blue-green barrier shimmering around them. The Sneasel lunged at the nine-tailed fox but was rebuffed with a ring of fire swivelling around it. "Nine!"

"_Molly?_" Misty cried, shocked, as her Togetic managed to send the Charmeleon flying with a well-aimed Gust. "Guys, that's Molly _Hale_!"

"Focus on the fight," Molly shrieked at her as she stumbled over the hem of her floor-length dress. Without a second thought, she gripped the fabric near her thigh and ripped it, tearing a ragged line through the dark green dress and shearing it off. "These people will kill—" Molly dove to the floor as an Absol's Razor Wind landed in the wall behind where her head had been two seconds ago. The attack cut clean through, and the wall started to collapse in her direction. She was forced to blast it into dust with a poorly charged Hyper Beam from her palm, and then her head swam sickeningly. "—kill you and your Pokemon!" she finished weakly, wondering if Misty had heard her over the noise of the fighting.

"Did you say Molly Hale?" the man tied to Professor Oak by the Venasaur shouted with no small amount of incredulity in his voice. "Don't say her na—she's _dead_!" Molly wondered who the man was to react so strongly to her name.

"Don't be preposterous," Oak yelled at the same time. "Sure, there have been criminal organizations that provoke battles, sometimes wars, but no one's been _stupid_ enough to go and _kill_ someone or some Pokemon! They'd have the entire police force across the three continents after them!"

_Not the Syndicate,_ Molly wanted to scream at the old man as she summoned her Espeon and it slipped into the battle soundlessly. She propped herself up against the wall as the dizziness passed slowly, watching her surroundings warily. _The Syndicate _is_ the police force in Orre, you forgot that Orre is also its own region by right, they're trying to resurrect Team Rocket's old goals, only they aren't afraid to use violence, and they want world domination and they're going to get it if Ash doesn't save the worl—_

She threw herself forward, ignoring the stars swimming in her vision as the Absol jumped at her, the blade on its head clipping her hair. None of them seemed to realize that these men dressed in black - men of the Syndicate - _were_ aiming to kill, despite the allowance given to the Sneasel and its trainer...until the bored-looking Alakazam used its telekinesis to rip Professor Ivy's Vileplume into bizarre, bloody strips of flesh and flora. Ivy's horrified, bloodcurdling scream of disbelief turned every head in the room, and the Alakazam sent the chunks of Vileplume carcass spinning into the walls.

* * *

_"That Pokeball is empty."_

_"You only carry four Pokemon with you, Molly Dolly?" Tracey asked somewhat disbelievingly. "Please tell me you _have_ more than four Pokemon. And that you didn't choose all your Pokemon because they were…_cute._"_

_"I do!" Molly insisted defensively, not understanding why the black-haired trainer was so affronted by her choice in Pokemon. Her Teddiursa, Vulpix, Skitty, and Eevee weren't her favorites just because they were _cute_. They just _happened_ to be her team composition for Pokemon Contests. "And what's wrong with cute Po—"_

_The empty Pokeball began moving and Molly stopped midsentence, staring at the animated object with what must be an absurd facial expression. "I thought you said that ball was empty, Molly Dolly," Tracey chuckled good-naturedly, reaching for the Pokeball, probably intending to release the Pokemon hidden inside._

_The Pokeball jumped away, cheerfully avoiding Tracey's hand._

_"What the—"_

_Molly stared at the Pokeball as it bounced up and down happily in a circle around Tracey as the black-haired trainer gaped at it in consternation. She sighed as she recognized the prank. "Sadism," she called gently. "Sade, come out."_

_"What is a 'sadism'?" Tracey asked curiously while Misty narrowed her eyes at the spinning Pokeball. "Is that some kind of Pokemon?"_

_"Haunter-haun," a disembodied voice whined as Molly tapped her foot. A second later, two purple hands – talons, really – materialized in front of Molly. A bloat of purple gas with two eyes and a wide, crooked leer appeared a second later. "Haun-haun-haun-haun."_

_"That's Sadism." Molly frowned after thinking for a second. "How did you follow me…er, here?" she asked the Haunter as it bounced away gleefully._

_"That's Ash's Haunter!" Misty exclaimed suddenly as the Haunter zoomed around the room cackling. She whirled to face Molly. "How did you capture him? Where did you get him? Why did Ash give his Haunter to you?"_

_Molly cringed, backing away subtly as Misty stared at her with furiously expectant eyes. "I-I dunno," she stammered. "He's not mine, he just follows me around sometimes. I've never put him in a Pokeball before, every time I try, he throws it back at me!"_

_Tracey cut in before Misty could say anything. "You called him Sadism, though," he said pensively. "Ash and Sabrina never gave him a name, but you did?" Molly nodded._

_"And he responds to you?" Another nod. Tracey grinned. "Then by all rights, he is yours."_

_Misty gave Tracey an icy look and he fell silent. "Recall him into a true Pokeball now," she ordered Molly. "Once you're done with unsummoning all your Pokemon, we can start training you."_

_"Er—but—" Molly objected as Misty stared at her flatly. "I…uh, how do I recall a Pokemon I've never captured?"_

_Misty's response cracked like a whip. "The same way you recalled all your other Pokemon," she snapped. "You don't need to have used a mechanical Pokeball to have captured Haunter. You gave it a nickname and it responds to the name. That should be good enough."_

_"Uh, Misty—" Tracey began, but he closed his mouth when Misty glared at him sharply. "Okay. Your call." He began to pace and Molly could tell he was nervous. About what?_

_Molly tried to relax and focus on the Haunter pulling on Misty's hair playfully. The stars at the edges of her vision swirled to colorful life as she concentrated and opened her palm. "Uh, Sade?" she began hesitantly, unsure of how to go about returning a Pokemon she'd never caught before. The Haunter stopped mid-swoop and bounced back to her, bobbing its head expectantly. Inky purple energy swirled in her hand to form a small round sphere, leaving her slightly lightheaded. She looked at Misty, who offered no advice or encouragement. "Return...?"_

_Immediately Molly knew something was wrong. Instead of the swirling clouds of light that had accompanied her other Pokemon's unsummonings, blinding bursts of color bloomed in her vision, rendering her lightheaded and epileptic. She could tell that somewhere between her attempt to unsummon the Haunter and now, she'd fallen to the floor, and then her world became violent bursts of prismatic light with no sound and no feeling except hot agony._

_Years seemed to pass before darkness, a welcome relief after the white-hot and jarring splotches of rainbow, edged into her vision. The darkness was quickly replaced by short glimpses of a dimension that was abstract and populated by squeaking little black shapes – Unown? Then it was gone, and the darkness encroached on her again. The fading heat was a godsend as icy numbness replaced the trembling wash of colors, and then she realized that it wasn't numbness – it was just the cold stone floor against her cheek._

_Taste was the next thing that returned to her in the form of a sharp, bitter metallic tang in her mouth accompanied by a nauseating liquid texture. Then her brain registered the pain from her bleeding lip and tongue, and the fiery throbbing sting that lanced through her body told her that her mouth wasn't the only thing that was bleeding._

_Her vision blurred back into reality, the colors fading to small pinpricks at the edges of her vision again. She was laying facedown and there was a shadow above her, though she wasn't sure what exactly it was because the cave was so dimly lit. It might have been a person—it was probably Tracey._

_Then her hearing began to restore itself to normal and she could fuzzily make out voices in the background, but they were muffled and oddly distorted, as if she were underwater. Molly tried to speak but when she opened her mouth and drew in oxygen, a violent coughing fit seized control of her body from her. Thin liquid caught in her throat and she choked._

_"…olly! Molly, are...ack? Ca…hear me?" a man's voice asked, echoing in and out of coherence. She felt something hold her thrashing body still, and more years passed before she drew in a slow, shaky breath, afraid to cause another bout of coughing._

_Molly's vision finally focused on the fuzzy shadow above her and her breathing calmed. Her tongue felt swollen when she tried to speak. "Wha…happen," she mumbled dizzily, feeling as if she had run a marathon and then been run over by a herd of Tauros. "I…m' Haun…ter…"_

_A blob of fiery orange-red appeared in her vision above her and after a few seconds, Molly was able to discern Misty's blue eyes as well. "You're recovering quickly," the red-haired woman said shortly. "That…that was my fault. I shouldn't have assumed anything."_

_"What happened?" Molly repeated, more lucidly this time. Her pounding headache was receding quickly but she still felt sore all over her body. Sitting up with Tracey's help, she propped herself against the wall with shaky arms._

_Tracey snorted. "Well, we can safely assume that that Haunter wasn't actually yours," he quipped. "The good news is, you snagged a Haunter. The bad news is…well, you survived, right? So there isn't much bad news, actually." He grinned._

_Molly blinked. "Survived," she repeated, a bit slowly. "Survived…what?"_

_"Catching your first Pokemon with a true Pokeball and…well, call it back out and you'll see," Tracey said cheerily, though Molly didn't miss the hard look he gave Misty._

_Shrugging, Molly took a deep breath to steady herself and spat out blood, fighting nausea. Blood always made her queasy, and it didn't help that the rest of her body felt unimaginably sore. For a second, she panicked – there were no pinpricks of stars hovering around the edges of her vision – but then she realized that she could still _feel_ them. Somehow. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch._

_"Er…Sade, come out," Molly said, faltering as the glowing purple sphere formed in her hand. It felt…off, somehow, and when the Pokeball disseminated into a Pokemon, she found herself staring at something that was definitely _not_ a Haunter._

_"Gar," the spiky-headed ghost wailed piteously, staring down at itself in bewilderment and kicking up its feet. It had _feet_? "Gengar, Gengar, Gengar!"_

_"Sade evolved?" Molly exclaimed. "I didn't know Haunter could evolve from being caught from the wild." The Ghost-type in question waved its stubby arms around desperately, bemoaning its loss of mobility. It didn't look like most Gengar did, though. Something about it was off, but Molly couldn't pinpoint it._

_"They can't," Misty said. She had that faraway look in her eyes again and didn't elaborate._

_Tracey grinned at Molly again. "Pokemon like Kadabra and Machoke and Haunter only evolve when there's an energy excess," he explained, seeming cheered by the prospect of being able to teach Molly something new. "The amount of energy released when a trainer releases a Pokemon for a trade – and therefore neutralize the trainer's power signature on the Pokemon – and the energy released from imprinting the new trainer's signature on the Pokemon – which finalizes a trade – is radioactive enough to make a Pokemon evolve."_

_Molly stared at him, confused, and opened her mouth to inform him that she didn't understand a single thing he'd just said. Before she could voice her bewilderment, though, a racket outside their small room broke her train of thought. A large panther with pearly fur and an odd gold mark on its head ran into the room, yowling loudly. It dashed straight to Misty, waving its long, wiry tail around—there was something small and blue on the end of it. The redhead was not amused, but Tracey was laughing quietly. "Fang," Misty said to the blue blob, "how many times have I told you to stop biting things?"_

_The blue blob fell to the ground with a small thud. "Toto," it sneezed, sulking for a short moment until it saw Molly and waddled towards her curiously. "Toto?"_

_"Ow!" Molly yelped as the Totodile latched itself onto her ankle with surprising strength. It gurgled happily as it blinked at her endearingly. _It's so cute, perfect for Contests,_ Molly thought. _I should get a Totodile when I get ba…

_Would she ever go back?_

_"Misty," the Persian whined in a strange rasp, and Molly nearly jumped out of her skin, "you gots ta control dat t'ing betta. Can't you just give it a chew toy or sum'tn?" Its glowing gold eyes settled on her and they showed surprise. Why was a cat surprised to see her? _She_ was the one who should be surprised—talking Pokemon were not exactly common. "Hey," the Persian meowed cordially. "You look sorta familiar, have we met before?"_

_The only thing Molly could do was glance between Misty, Tracey, and the talking Persian. "Uh," she said, scratching the Totodile's head. It let go of her ankle to nose at her leg, seeking more attention._

_"Persian, this is Molly," Tracey offered. "The mission was successful."_

_The cat's eyes widened even further, if that was possible. It swung its head back to face Molly with newfound appreciation. "Ah, you're dat mini twerpette wit' dat Entei and dose freaky Unown," the Persian clucked knowingly. It blinked. "Wait, Misty, does dis mean—"_

_"Yes," Misty said shortly at the same time Molly exclaimed, "You're that Meowth! That talking Meowth!"_

_"Persian now, Perrrrr," the panther corrected huffily, twitching its whiskers. It turned back to Misty, tail lashing back and forth. "Misty, dinner's ready and everybody's waitin' for ya. Yesta'day's hunters are back, too, ya know."_

_Misty nodded and gestured to Tracey and Molly, who was still staring at the Persian. "Molly, if you're feeling well enough to walk, you should eat," the redhead suggested, helping Molly to her feet. "You probably won't feel it until later, but what you just went through could have drained most people enough to kill them. You need energy." She was right—Molly felt a little winded but otherwise mostly recovered from the evolution seizure._

_"Daaaah!" the small Totodile cried as Molly stood up to follow Misty and Tracey out of the cavern-room. It ran in circles around her feet and butted its head against her ankles as they walked until she finally relented and bent down to pick the thing up in her arms. When the Totodile made as if to bite her arm, Molly glared at it sternly until its small shoulders drooped in disappointment and it settled grumpily against her. The mood didn't last long; within twenty seconds, the Water-type had begun to babble nonstop at her._

_Persian struck up a conversation with her as they walked through torchlit halls, and they chatted about Pokemon Contests and strategies – trivial things to distract her, Molly realized when she noticed that Misty and Tracey were quietly conversing ahead of them – but she didn't complain. The large feline was friendly enough, and it was nice to pretend that things were normal. As normal as a talking Persian could be, anyways._

_Then, suddenly, Misty and Tracey had stopped and the redhead was now speaking more loudly. "…escue was successful, and she's already managed to complete true Pokeballs for all her Pokemon," Misty informed an unknown audience. The Totodile burped and grinned at Molly as she patted its head. "The Boss is going to need a report from your group on the hunting party. Especially since it seems you ran into trouble."_

_"We don't run into trouble," came a cheerful man's bellow, "it runs into us!" There was a smattering of laughter and scattered applause._

_"Was anybody injured?" Misty continued, ignoring the jest. "I need today's party in front of me, right now, to discuss…"_

_Tracey glanced back at Molly as Misty walked down the stairs into a buzz of chatter and white noise. "Come on, then, Molly Dolly," he said, winking and holding out his arm. His voice and face were smiling, but there was something much more somber about his body language and his eyes. "There's a couple of people here who have been waiting a long, long time to see you. Eleven years, to be exact."_

_"What? People…people here _know_ me? _No,_ stop chewing on my hair."_

_"Toto…"_

_Tracey gave her a long and searching look. "Molly," he said, dropping the nickname. His long black hair fell into his eyes. "It hasn't hit you yet, the scale of this war and what it's done to us. How it's forced people into hiding and decimated most of the world's population. How it's brought us – the resistance – together. They're all here because they were strong enough to survive the initial scourging. You're going to recognize a _lot_ of the people out there. Gym leaders, Contest Grandmasters, savants, the like. And they're going to know you because you're going to know them. Some of them extremely well. I need you to keep in mind that eleven years have passed. People are going to be…different."_

_"What's a savant?" Molly frowned. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked quietly as the two of them, accompanied by Persian, walked out of the narrow hallway and into an enormous cave. She immediately spotted Misty standing off to the side of the huge cavern talking with a willowy woman with chestnut hair. As soon as the oddly bright lighting hit her face, the chatter died down and more than a hundred pairs of eyes were suddenly trained on her, but only one pair seemed to matter at the moment._

_Tracey didn't answer. He didn't have to. Molly couldn't breathe. The woman that Misty was talking to was covered in blood and dust and had hair caked in dirt. She was staring at Molly with blue, blue eyes that were partially obscured by wavy hair, and she wore an expression of such emotion that her blue, blue eyes were tearing up._

_She also happened to be Molly's mother._

* * *

**Again, really sorry about the long wait! Leave a review, I'll give you virtual hugs and cookies!**


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